Informed Consent

Few issues affecting the therapeutic professions are as much discussed and as little understood as informed consent. Although most physicians and other professionals who are affected by the legal requirements for informed consent recognize that there is some legal obligation to talk with patients and obtain their agreement to proposed treatment, often their knowledge of the details are a mixture of myth and misunderstanding. Written by a psychiatrist, a social scientist, and an attorney, this book provides the first comprehensive introduction to the theory and practice of informed consent. Beginning with an overview of the issues raised by the development of the idea of informed consent and the ethical theories on which informed consent rests, the book then details the legal requirements for practitioners, paying particular attention to areas of legal ambiguity with which practitioners must cope in formulating their approaches to informed consent. The book next considers the problems faced by health professional in applying informed consent theory in the clinical setting and proposes a model for simplifying that task.