August 24, 2022 – Doctors today view informed consent as yet another administrative burden, heaped on a pile of other bureaucratic and regulatory tasks that serve only to slow them down. In the 21st century, informed consent is most often a boilerplate document, rife with legalese and a litany of potentially negative patient outcomes, up to and including death.
In reality, these consent forms aren’t used to educate patients about the real risks they face nor do they exist to make patients equal partners (or even participants) in the healing process. The form’s perceived lack of importance is exemplified in many academic medical centers by how often the task of acquiring the patient’s consent is relegated to the lowly intern.
Read Dr. Robert Pearl’s latest column on Breaking the Rules of Healthcare in the latest issue of Repertoire.