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The role of knowledge and medical involvement in the context of informed consent: a curse or a blessing?

Informed consent (IC) is a key patients’ right. It gives patients the opportunity to access relevant information/knowledge and to support their decision-making role in partnership with clinicians. Despite this promising account of IC, the relationship between ‘knowledge’, as derived from IC, and the...

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Autor principal: Milo, Caterina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9628512/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36319904
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11019-022-10121-z
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author Milo, Caterina
author_facet Milo, Caterina
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description Informed consent (IC) is a key patients’ right. It gives patients the opportunity to access relevant information/knowledge and to support their decision-making role in partnership with clinicians. Despite this promising account of IC, the relationship between ‘knowledge’, as derived from IC, and the role of clinicians is often misunderstood. I offer two examples of this: (1) the prenatal testing and screening for disabilities; (2) the consent process in the abortion context. In the first example, IC is often over-medicalized, that is to say the disclosure of information appears to be strongly in the clinicians’ hands. In this context, knowledge has often been a curse on prospective parents. Framing information in a doctor-centred and often negative way has hindered upon prospective parents’ decision-making role and also portrayed wrong assumptions upon disabled people more widely. In the second context, information is more often than not dismissed and, in a de-medicalized scenario, medical contribution often underplayed. The latter leads to an understanding of the dialogue with clinicians as a mere hinderance to the timely access to an abortion. Ultimately, I claim that it is important that knowledge, as derived from IC, is neither altogether dismissed via a process of de-medicalization, nor used as a curse on patients via a process of over-medicalization. None of the two gives justice to IC. Only when a better balance between medical and patients’ contribution is sought, knowledge can aspire to be a blessing (i.e. an opportunity for them), not a curse on patients in the IC context.
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spelling pubmed-96285122022-11-02 The role of knowledge and medical involvement in the context of informed consent: a curse or a blessing? Milo, Caterina Med Health Care Philos Scientific Contribution Informed consent (IC) is a key patients’ right. It gives patients the opportunity to access relevant information/knowledge and to support their decision-making role in partnership with clinicians. Despite this promising account of IC, the relationship between ‘knowledge’, as derived from IC, and the role of clinicians is often misunderstood. I offer two examples of this: (1) the prenatal testing and screening for disabilities; (2) the consent process in the abortion context. In the first example, IC is often over-medicalized, that is to say the disclosure of information appears to be strongly in the clinicians’ hands. In this context, knowledge has often been a curse on prospective parents. Framing information in a doctor-centred and often negative way has hindered upon prospective parents’ decision-making role and also portrayed wrong assumptions upon disabled people more widely. In the second context, information is more often than not dismissed and, in a de-medicalized scenario, medical contribution often underplayed. The latter leads to an understanding of the dialogue with clinicians as a mere hinderance to the timely access to an abortion. Ultimately, I claim that it is important that knowledge, as derived from IC, is neither altogether dismissed via a process of de-medicalization, nor used as a curse on patients via a process of over-medicalization. None of the two gives justice to IC. Only when a better balance between medical and patients’ contribution is sought, knowledge can aspire to be a blessing (i.e. an opportunity for them), not a curse on patients in the IC context. Springer Netherlands 2022-11-01 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC9628512/ /pubmed/36319904 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11019-022-10121-z Text en © The Author(s) 2022, corrected publication 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Scientific Contribution
Milo, Caterina
The role of knowledge and medical involvement in the context of informed consent: a curse or a blessing?
title The role of knowledge and medical involvement in the context of informed consent: a curse or a blessing?
title_full The role of knowledge and medical involvement in the context of informed consent: a curse or a blessing?
title_fullStr The role of knowledge and medical involvement in the context of informed consent: a curse or a blessing?
title_full_unstemmed The role of knowledge and medical involvement in the context of informed consent: a curse or a blessing?
title_short The role of knowledge and medical involvement in the context of informed consent: a curse or a blessing?
title_sort role of knowledge and medical involvement in the context of informed consent: a curse or a blessing?
topic Scientific Contribution
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9628512/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36319904
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11019-022-10121-z
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