Informed Consent in Practice - Essay Example

"Informed Consent in Practice" is a wonderful example of a paper on the health system. Informed consent can be defined as the process through which permission is attained prior to clinical research or healthcare intervention (Bowman, Spicer & Iqbal, 2012). It is collected via guidelines from research and medical ethics fields and has roots in law, moral philosophy, and various disciplines such as medicine. Consent in healthcare practice has its roots in case law, whereas research consent is rooted in administrative regulations and ethical statutes and codes. In the latter, courts do not have a major role. In medical research, a researcher will have to seek the permission of a participant prior to enrolling him/her in the clinical trial. In the case of healthcare practice, the practitioner will be required to get consent from the patient prior to the provision of therapy (Bowman, Spicer & Iqbal, 2012).

            The four principles of ethical research are beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice. Beneficence is referent to doing good and/or promoting good, which means acting in the best interest of the participant (Bowman, Spicer & Iqbal, 2012). In medical research, it may refer to promoting good to medical progress, society, and the individual. This principle is complicated in medical research because the research’s main goal is to give new knowledge, rather than care for the individual participant. Non-maleficence refers to doing no harm and/or preventing any harm. In medical research, the researcher must ensure that he/she knows a particular protocol’s harm and whether these harms are acceptable. In addition to, working to minimize these harms, and informing the participants about the various risks. Autonomy refers to respecting the participant’s capacities, perspectives, and values. The participants must be helped in acting as agents of self-determination as much as possible. Where the person’s autonomy is limited, they must be given appropriate protection. Therefore, by honoring informed consent, the participant can advance individual choice and personal values. Finally, justice refers to the requirement in medical research that un-equals are treated unequally and equals equally (Bowman, Spicer & Iqbal, 2012). For example, if participants have different health status and educational backgrounds, they are treated differently in order for their differences to be fairly balanced.

 

Read More