Misconceptions about the Doctrine of Informed Consent in the Medical Profession

This article focuses on common misunderstandings in healthcare regarding how physicians and medical researchers apply the doctrine of informed consent. The specific myth addressed has to do with the level of care expected of medical professionals when treating patients. This paper also explains how the legal history of informed consent has led to misconceptions about informed consent as applied to both medical researchers and medical physicians. There has long been a public misconception that medical researchers are subject to a lower standard of care than medical doctors in cases involving informed consent. We argue that this misconception is largely attributed to the fact that statutes, ethical regulations, guidelines, and legal precedents within the medical and research profession are governed by two separate bodies of laws and regulatory guidelines. Furthermore, informed consent in the medical setting has traditionally been enacted primarily from case law, while informed consent in the research setting has primarily been enacted from statutory law and regulations.