Informed Consent in Malpractice Cases

Abstract

FOR at least two decades, American law in the malpractice field has often imposed unrealistic burdens on physicians in regard to informed consent.1 The courts have, in my opinion, turned the proper ethical obligation of a physician into an expansive intellectual exercise that is of dubious benefit to sick and worried patients. In an angry essay some years ago, Franz Ingelfinger referred to the legal rules as creating informed, but uneducated, consent.2 Perhaps worse is the fact that the doctrine of informed consent in its most severe form — which requires a physician to inform the patient of all potential . . .