ABSTRACT
The doctrine of informed consent requires that all patients are sufficiently informed about the medical procedures that are offered, so that they can make intelligent and autonomous decisions about whether to have or refuse such an intervention (Holder, 1990). Jacoby and associates (1999) provide the following definition of informed consent,
“From an ethical standpoint, the notion of informed consent is based on an egalitarian patient-physician relationship, where the patient is an autonomous person who has the right to make treatment decisions for him/herself. Most commonly, four basic criteria have to be met for informed consent: disclosure, understanding, voluntariness and competence”.
