The Law and Social Values: Medical Uncertainty

Excerpt

Informed consent and its application in clinical practice are of vital interest to surgeons because allegations of medical battery (that is, the intentional treatment of a patient without informed consent) can accompany medical malpractice lawsuits if the court perceives that there was an insufficient or defective informed consent [14]. Physicians are trained to discuss informed consent with patients. This discussion should include documentation of the known risks, benefits, and alternatives to a proposed treatment or surgical intervention [3]. Complicating the full-disclosure requirement of the law is the increasing awareness that the exact benefits of many common operations and medical interventions are uncertain. In our technology- and information-driven world [1], patients have access to many sources of healthcare statistics that are outside the physician-patient interaction. As such, the focus of medical practice has moved away from a paternalistic view to one that is consultative—the physician presents options to the patient, who then makes a choice [11]. In this model, the law offers little guidance about how to convey uncertainty during the informed-consent discussion. …