Consent in Health Care

For new drugs and medical treatments to reach the market and be used, they must be first tested for their safety and efficacy on a number of human volunteers in clinical trials. To perform the trials, the participating doctors and researchers must thoroughly explain to the volunteers the purpose and risk of the trial and receive agreement from the volunteers. This agreement between the researcher and volunteers is commonly known as “consent” and is used extensively in medical practices. Because it is now standard, it is easy to forget that consent is only a recent invention that comes from an ugly history of human experimentation that has been done in the past years.

The term “consent” is considered to have first appeared in 1957 in a malpractice suit in the U.S. (Salgo decision). However, it was World War II and the human experimentation done by Nazi Germany doctors that pushed forward the idea of informed consent. Along with judging war criminals, the Nuremberg trials declared 10 ethical principles (the Nuremberg Code), with consent listed first. The Nuremberg Code is the foundation of research and medical ethics and impacts all international ethical guidelines including the Declaration of Helsinki.

Medical discoveries and medical practices are often the result of overcoming great challenges. Consent is continuously being developed to support these advances while protecting the patient. Consent is one example of the importance of bioethics. While research must benefit society, it must do so in an ethical way. Consent in simple terms is when everyone involved agrees to do something and is okay with it. It’s like saying yes to doing something.

Consent codes and laws protect both – care givers and care receivers. They help establish trust in care giver while respecting autonomy as a care seeker. In recent practice, medical professionals are more oriented towards diagnosis and treatment because of lack of time and more competition. Most of the medical professionals fail to remember to take consent. Consent form  is a  communication between a patient and a health care provider that often leads to agreement or permission for care, treatment, or services. Every patient has the right to get information and ask questions before procedures and treatments. If adult patients are mentally able to make their own decisions, medical care cannot begin unless they give  consent.