In
article, Informed Consent-Must It Remain
a Fairy Tale?, Jay Katz offers some suggestions for a new way for doctor
and patient to work together to achieve the full benefits of ‘informed consent’. He states:
Physicians must come to see that they have a “duty to respect patients
as persons so that care will encompass allowing patients to live their own
self-willed ways”.
This term “self-willed ways” is
intriguing. It seems to encompass the
essence of the spirit and letter of informed consent. This blog will discuss another aspect of the
article “uninformed consent”. In essence
this means, patients signing forms that they do not understand and/or which do
not have a full disclosure of all aspects (medical care, surgery, testing,
etc). Barbara Coombs Lee presents more on this topic
in the link below.
Katz suggests that possibilities of this (uninformed consent) happening
could be reduced by a new healthcare model along the lines of that in ethics of
care moral theory. He advocates a fusion
of doctors not only practicing medicine (testing, bio-technology, diagnoses, surgery)
but care for patients and their families.
He says this is the only way to ensure that patient and doctor
relationships provide a moral and ethical base to respect autonomy and informed
consent.
Is
this model a reasonable possibility? Or is Katz’s idea just another “fairy tale”,
too?
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