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Viewpoint: Interests, rights and standards of care in the context of globalized medicine
Author(s) -
Haker H.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of internal medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.625
H-Index - 160
eISSN - 1365-2796
pISSN - 0954-6820
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2796.2011.02349_1.x
Subject(s) - declaration of helsinki , medical ethics , informed consent , bioethics , autonomy , human rights , medicine , context (archaeology) , intervention (counseling) , law , paternalism , political science , nursing , alternative medicine , pathology , paleontology , biology
For most works on medical ethics, the right of patients is spelled out as respect for their interests, justified by freedom as the basis of autonomy, moral agency and amodern understanding of the individuals’ right to decide on issues related to their (good) lives. Physicians’ duties are constrained by patients’ freedomrights,namely their right todecision-making and nonintervention, and are therefore to justify any intervention in the light of the patients’ own understanding and concept of the ‘good life’. Successful communication (i.e. doctor–patient relationship) will result in the free and informed consent to a medical intervention – without it, the intervention would be considered morally wrong [3]. Over the last few decades, informed consent has become a kind of magic formula to guarantee patients’ rights. However, given the bureaucratic environment ofmodernmedicine, it was not long before lack of time to engage in lengthy communication turned the thoroughly reflected ‘free and informed consent’ into a matter-offact standardized form,merely to besignedby thepatient to make the operational sequences of medical actionaseffectiveaspossible.