Is Informed Consent Essential to Health Care Ethics?

Last month as an assignment, I was asked to debate the virtues and reasons of why Informed Consent is still essential to Health Care Ethics. I took the assignment and was very happy with the topic because I do believe that it is essential. Then after the debate was over, I started to think about the opposite side and how hard it would be to be in the "con" side of that statement.

Even though I agree that Informed Consent is essential to Health Care Ethics, I decided to look for options to Informed Consent and ask different health professionals about their thoughts. 

This are my results:

The Nurse: 

As a pediatric Nurse Mike O, believed that the only thing that could take over informed consent was the eduction of the Health Care Workers. With moral issues issues on the rise, he believed that by educating providers in advanced issues such as abortion and religious beliefs and the understanding and empathy, the informed consent walls that are put up could be avoided. 

The Physician:

Dr. K, a third year resident was surprised by the question, and told me that the only option to informed consent would be a modified informed consent. She believed that the consent could come from peer review, and that the every decision could be made with the help of a more experienced physician. This is already done in the case of Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants, but the input of the patient is always required.

The Administrator:

Carl T. is part of the business team, and he deals with billing. As you might know, a procedure can only be billed if the patient consents (explicitly or implicitly) to it. He believes that if we didn't have informed consent his job would be easier, but as expensive as our health system is provider induced demand would skyrocket. The solution, to have universal Health Care. That way, costs would not be a factor in what the physician would prescribe. Money would not be an option.

As you can see, all of the Health Care professionals had ideas, but none of them were perfect. Informed Consent, even with it's imperfections is the only (for now) way that we can curb the absolute power otherwise given to the people that care for us.