Korean J Med Ethics.  2002 Jun;5(1):27-41.

Doctors Duty of Informed Consent and Patient Informed Consent Form

• YU HJ

Abstract

1. When a patient goes to a hospital, he is expected to give consent to the treatment his/her doctor may provide. The initial consent, however, does not include all the consents to the following treatment a patient is going to receive. For further treatments, especially for concrete treatments, the doctor must seek for additional consents. 2. A doctor must offer sufficient informations to his patient when getting a consent. While doing this a pre-written patient informed consent form can be convenient as well as effective. The doctor can explain systematically without leaving out any important point, and the patient can understand much better what the doctor is explaining by reading the paper repeatedly. Furthermore this same form can be useful later on when any legitimate question arise. 3. I reviewed many patient informed consent forms previously made by many academies of medical science in specific medical fields. I find the papers lacking in sufficient informations especially on alternative treatment measures. Even if there are, they are described negatively, which make the forms suspicious of giving biased informations. Above all the terms used are too difficult for the patients to understand. I, therefore, propose a patient informed consent form, which I believe might be ideal.

Keyword

sufficient explanation; consent; informed consent form