Informed consent in health care services

Abstract

As a general rule, medical interventions require to be informingly consented by the patient. This requirement is ethically founded in the autonomy of the patient to decide on his own body and the respect for his dignity that prevent to instrumentalise it. The way in which the law materialises those ends is by implementing duties to inform and duties to advise, and regulating the conditions under which the consent must be given. Legally, those duties delimit the relation physicianpatient and give guidance to define hypothesis of civil liability. In this article, we revise the conditions for the satisfaction of those duties and the cases in which their breach give rise to civil liability.