Without full information, patient consent is not consent, but the real question is what it means to ‘be informed about the surgery’. There are few patients who are experts and truly understand what is at stake, even when it concerns their health and life.
Written by: Prof. Dr. Hrvoje Kačer
It is a sad fact that at any moment in numerous hospitals and outside of them, in addition to medical procedures that save lives and health, there are also others, those where someone’s death has occurred or health has been damaged, which could have been, and sometimes even had to be, avoided. It is easy to say that anyone who works makes mistakes when it comes to carpenters, tailors, or similar craftsmen, but that ‘ease’ is by no means present when it comes to doctors who are somehow always, for better or worse, in the spotlight. Despite all doubts, despite frequent protests from doctors that they are unjustly pinned ‘on the pillory of shame’, despite frequent protests from hospitals that they are blocked by claimants who lack understanding of healthcare with ‘unreasonable’ court rulings, the fact is that what exists today in this regard represents only the tip of the iceberg compared to what will emerge in the near future. It is not that doctors will start working worse than they did before; on the contrary, it is certain that they are becoming more careful and cautious, but rather that what is happening is what has long ago occurred in the developed West (especially in the USA). The public and lawmakers are becoming increasingly sensitized to the protection of patient rights and errors (which exist and will always exist, and it is simply impossible to imagine a time when they will not exist at all), and courts are punishing them more strictly. Such strictness is present at various disciplinary levels within healthcare (including job loss and loss of license to practice), through criminal measures (including, in recent times, once unimaginable long prison sentences) to civil liability and compensation for damages, which in the West typically reach millions and create the need for mandatory professional liability insurance, which in turn increases the cost of healthcare.
