Informed consent and the rise of autonomy

Although the need for informed consent to medical treatment should be familiar to health-care professionals, the detail regarding what needs to be disclosed to the patient is less well known and even unclear. This article describes the legal requirements for informed consent, and briefly charts the development of the law over the past 25 years. It highlights the fact that the law has changed considerably, and demonstrates that this judicial activism has been as a result of an increasing prioritization of the concept of patient autonomy. It also shows that, on occasion, the courts are prepared to modify the law in order to protect what they see as the underlying principles behind it.