Patient-Centered Informed Consent in Surgical Practice
Open Access
- 1 January 2006
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Medical Association (AMA) in Archives of Surgery
- Vol. 141 (1) , 86-92
- https://doi.org/10.1001/archsurg.141.1.86
Abstract
Informed consent is an established ethical and legal requirement for surgical treatment. It has important roots in Anglo-American political theory and has been articulated in the law in a series of judicial decisions.1,2 Informed consent also forms the ethical foundation for the modern practices of shared decision making and patient-centered care.3 Many elements of surgical consent are generally understood, but several issues remain controversial: (1) does a patient’s preoperative consent encompass postoperative complications? (2) can surrogates refuse treatment to which patients had previously consented? (3) what is the role of the ethics committee in resolving treatment disputes? and (4) how should deaths resulting from surrogate decisions to limit treatment be counted in operative statistics?Keywords
This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit:
- The Limits of Proxy Decision Making: UndertreatmentCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 1995