Informed consent: recent changes in the law.

Abstract

Physicians have the legal duty to disclose all risks and consequences of a proposed procedure. This duty must be understood as a reversal of previous legal doctrine. Disclosure is adequate only when a patient has enough information from that disclosure to decide for himself which way he wants to go and what treatment he wants to choose from among the options available to him. Relevance of disclosure, not fullness, is the criterion of sufficiency. The idea that the doctor or the profession knows best what the patient should do has been rejected as a legal standard in the District of Columbia, California, New York, Wisconsin, Kansas and Rhode Island. It is expected that more states will follow this trend. The informed part of the doctrine of informed consent is only the tip of an iceberg of social change.