Values Grounding the Informed Consent in Medical Practice: Theory and Practice

Ana Frunză,Antonio Sandu

doi:10.1177/2158244017740397

Ana Frunză, Antonio Sandu

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244017740397

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Abstract

This research aims to identify the significance of the informed consent (IC) in the medical staff’s daily practice. The research does not aim to validate a hypothesis, but it does aim to identify what meaning professionals give to the ethical tools they use. We wish to explore whether or not IC is understood by medical staff as a means of respecting patient’s autonomy, or whether it acts as a protective measure for health care staff. To identify the meanings attributed to IC by health professionals in health care institutions, we developed and conducted individual interviews and analyzed the acquired data using a grounded theory (GT) qualitative approach.

Highlights

Introduction and Research BackgroundEver since the beginning of bioethics, one of the mandatory actions in medical practice and medical research was the informed consent (IC), as key ethical requirement
We aim to identify whether the IC is perceived and used as an ethical tool for promoting patient’s autonomy, or it rather is an administrative procedure designed to comply with the legal obligations
How is IC understood by the Romanian medical staff? How the is IC used to ensure and promote the patients’ autonomy? Is IC used as an ethical or as an administrative tool? We considered the assumption that IC is rather understood as a protective tool for the medical staff to avoid malpractice accusations

Summary

Introduction

Introduction and Research BackgroundEver since the beginning of bioethics, one of the mandatory actions in medical practice and medical research was the informed consent (IC), as key ethical requirement. The professionals are not seen as experts anymore, the “proper judges of the patients’ best interests,” in the relationship with their patients, the focus migrating towards the “patients’ capacities to make their own decisions” (O’Neill, 2001). The IC became the instrument which turns the patient into the expert of his own health state, able to decide for his own life, based on correct information he or she receives. The patients should have to define their own therapeutic goals, according to their own social, cultural, and health status and values, and to take the responsibility to achieve them (Bodenheimer et al, 2002; Oprea et al, 2013) The IC became the instrument which turns the patient into the expert of his own health state, able to decide for his own life, based on correct information he or she receives. Oprea, Cojocaru, Sandu, and Bulgaru-Iliescu (2013) starting from the approach of Bodenheimer, Lorig, Holman, and Grumbach (2002) consider that “physicians are experts in diseases, whereas patients are experts in their own lives [ . . . ].” More than that, the patients should have to define their own therapeutic goals, according to their own social, cultural, and health status and values, and to take the responsibility to achieve them (Bodenheimer et al, 2002; Oprea et al, 2013)

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