Making a difference: Incorporating theories of autonomy into models of informed consent

Abstract

Background: Obtaining patients' informed consent is an ethical and legal obligation in healthcare practice. Whilst the law provides prescriptive rules and guidelines, ethical theories of autonomy provide moral foundations. Models of practice of consent, have been developed in the bioethical literature to assist in understanding and integrating the ethical theory of autonomy and legal obligations into the clinical process of obtaining a patient's informed consent to treatment. Aims: To review four models of consent and analyse the way each model incorporates the ethical meaning of autonomy and how, as a consequence, they might change the actual communicative process of obtaining informed cons..