Informed Consent: Respecting The Patient

Paul Wagner
Professor William Parkhurst
Biomedical Ethics
2 December 2015
Informed Consent: Respecting the Patient In this essay I argue based on the principle of informed consent that physicians always have a duty to get permission from autonomous patients before treatment and that physicians should never lie about the treatment based on a deontological framework through the principles of autonomy and beneficence, no matter how much psychological pain could be caused. The principle of informed consent states that the term “refers to the action of an autonomous, informed person agreeing to submit to medical treatment or experimentation” (Vaughn 180). The two main principles that help justify informed consent would be principles of autonomy

The first reason is that informed consent protects patients’ health and welfare. As it protects patients from being used to promote science and careers of physicians as well as being able to protect patients from paternalistic judgments on what is good for them. The second is the principle of autonomy, which is the predominant justification of informed consent. As it is autonomy that allows the patient to be in full control of their own actions as well as to be in full control of what they’ll allowed to happen to themselves such as the kind of surgery or treatment that they want to receive. The third reason is that informed consent prevents abusive conduct from deontological offenses such as assault, coercion, and exploitation. The fourth and probably one of the most important is that informed consent builds trust between the patient and the physician. When there is a trustworthy transparent relationship between the two, it’s easier to obtain informed consent and it is less likely for problems or complications to occur. The fifth rationale is self-ownership, in which we are presumed to hold proprietary rights over our own bodies and ourselves. As this is why we must grant permission to allow medical intervention on ourselves. The last rationale for informed consent builds off of self-ownership, which is the need to protect patients’ sense of personal

With this being said, it is important that the principle of informed consent becomes something that is extremely relevant to our society as a whole. As with medicine becoming more advanced everyday, patients should be explained by their physician exactly what kind of treatment will be happening to themselves as well as all of the possible outcomes associated with said treatment. This is important to discuss, as we currently live in a society in which everything is “Politically Correct”, meaning that is someone wasn’t told all of the available options that they had available to be treated with, or gave consent willing, could end up with lawsuits or worst case scenarios such as death. Regarding this, both patients and physicians have things at stake such as money, time, resources, and medical practices. So it is crucial that in this day and age that the principle of informed consent is practiced everywhere in order to ensure patient autonomy is