What is "informed consent" for purposes of medical treatment?
Medical professionals must obtain your informed consent prior to rendering medical treatment.
"Informed consent" is an individual's agreement to allow medical treatment to be rendered based upon full disclosure of all the facts necessary to make an intelligent decision. In order to provide informed consent, you must be able to understand what the proposed medical treatment entails, what procedures will be used, whether drugs or surgery will be utilized, what the various alternatives are, as well as the potential risks and side effects. Whether or not the consent was "informed consent" is based on an analysis of all available information -- you must be able to understand the information and then have the mental ability to weigh and consider this information.