"Nudging" Informed Consent Toward One Direction

  You  enter a grocery store and as you pass through the front door you find a beautiful display of luscious  looking fresh fruits.  You came to the market to buy some spare ribs and wine for supper but that is way in the back of the store.  Prior to entering the store, you had only the ribs and wine on your shopping list but now you find yourself buying a few pounds of the fruit. Moving back through the market, you find the display of bottles of wine. You find that the more expensive and imported wines are displayed at eye level and the cheaper, local and less noteworthy wines are standing on an elevated shelf, accessable, but you have to reach up for them. Might you be tempted to take one of the wines at eye level? Maybe not, but then you hadn't even previously considered buying an expensive wine for this evening's supper. What I am presenting here as examples of how the grocery market can affect your decision-making by creating "nudges" to change your shopping list decisions. This example of ways to affect decision-making in the grocery decision-making also can occur in the challenge of making your informed consent medical decisions.The June 2013 issue of the American Journal of Bioethics has one of its target articles and a number of open-peer commentaries just about "nudging and informed consent". If the healthcare provider presents to the patient the information needed for the patient to make informed consent but yet sets a particular detail "in...
Source: Bioethics Discussion Blog - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs