Patient Informed Consent for the Teaching Hospital "Trainee" Care: Informing Realistic Scenarios

The following article I wrote for Bioethics.net is reproduced here with permission09/16/2013PATIENT INFORMED CONSENT FOR THE TEACHING HOSPITAL “TRAINEE” CARE: INFORMING REALISTIC SCENARIOSby Maurice Bernstein MDInformed consent is the ethical and legal hallmark for the support of patient decision-making in medicine.  Though the ethics of patient communication of facts without deceit has been part of medical consideration for generations, it wasn’t until the landmark decision Schloendorff v The Society of the New York Hospital in 1914 that informed consent became United States law.  Informed consent has been also been emphasized from the aspect of medical ethics, in recent decades, as decision making has moved from physician paternalism to patient autonomy.  Patients awaiting medical/surgical procedures are currently given variable content and amounts of information about their illness and the procedure itself and the risks and outcomes anticipated. Some general information is provided as a printed form and patient specific details is provided directly to the patient or surrogate by a healthcare provider, hopefully one who is a participant in the procedure.The matter of  the patient being fully informed as to the upcoming procedure may be complicated in teaching hospitals where,  in addition to the attending physician and surgeon,  fellows, residents, interns and medical students may be present during the procedure  and actual...
Source: Bioethics Discussion Blog - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs