In Australia, as in other common law jurisdictions, the doctrine of informed consent has developed from the principle that individuals have a right to decide for themselves whether or not to undergo medical treatments. 1 The personal autonomy of the patient is facilitated by the provision of information by their medical practitioner. While a description in broad terms of the procedure to be per...

The concept of informed consent was first used in the 60's. The meaning of this term is the need of a preliminary and valid consensus that places the doctor in an authorised condition whereby he is able to carry out his work. Notwithstanding the importance and delicacy of this topic and the potentially serious consequences, there is not, as yet, universal behaviour, on the part of doctors, rega...

Cancer clinical trials are a necessary component of the effort to improve cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Essential to this process is the informed consent of the individuals who participate in these research studies. The purpose of this article is to describe patient, provider, and informed consent process issues with presentations of data reported in the current literature. The r...

The number of available organs for transplant each year falls woefully short of the number of patients in need of donated organs in the United States. While approval numbers are very high for organ donation, the number of registered donors is much smaller. A commonly proposed solution to increase the pool of organ donors is to replace the current explicit consent policy with a presumed consent ...

Until about thirty years ago, the extent of disclosure about and consent-seeking for medical interventions was influenced by a beneficence model of professional behaviour. Informed consent shifted attention to a duty to respect the autonomy of patients. The new requirement arrived on the American scene in two separate contexts: for daily practice in 1957, and for clinical study in 1966. A confu...

OBJECTIVE To address the need to describe informed consent in pediatric settings and to identify barriers to parent understanding, this study assessed how aspects of clinician-parent communication during the informed consent conference (ICC) relate to parent understanding of informed consent and parent perception of the impact of the ICC on their anxiety and control. METHODS Parents of 127 ch...

What renders some mentally disordered patients incapable of informed consent to medical interventions? It is argued that a patient is incapable of giving informed consent owing to mental disorder, if a mental disorder prevents a patient from understanding what s/he consents to; if a mental disorder prevents a patient from choosing decisively; if a mental disorder prevents a patient from communi...

The therapeutic misconception has been seen as presenting an ethical problem because failure to distinguish the aims of research participation from those receiving ordinary treatment may seriously undermine the informed consent of research subjects. Hence, most theoretical and empirical work on the problems of the therapeutic misconception has been directed to evaluate whether, and to what degr...

National health care registries in the Nordic countries share many attributes, but different legal and ethical frameworks represent a challenge to promoting effective joint research. Internationally, there is a lack of knowledge about how ethical matters are considered in Nordic registry-based research, and a lack of knowledge about how Nordic ethics committees operate and what is needed to obt...

OBJECTIVE To explore the doctrine of informed consent and the development of capacity in adolescents with psychiatric problems to help clinicians better reflect on the relevant ethical issues. METHOD We discuss the relevant literature and explore the role of psychiatric impairment in adolescents' ability to consent. RESULTS In common law, there is no minimum age at which individuals are abl...