Informed Consent and Medical Malpractice Claims
Anyone who is preparing to undergo a medical treatment or surgery should go through the informed consent process.
However, while statistics aren’t readily available, physicians likely fail to perform this required pre-operative procedure when treating patients. Doing so violates a doctor’s duty of care per a court ruling cited in a study published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2023, yet it happens nonetheless.
Another study published by the NIH in 2004 suggested that the “lack of informed consent can reinforce a claim of medical malpractice.”
Below, we’ll delve deeper into what informed consent is, when it must be performed, and by whom.
We’ll also describe the dangers associated with doctors failing to consent patients and how situations like these often lead to the filing of a medical malpractice claim.