Informed Consent Disadvantages

Disadvantages Even though the advantages outweigh the disadvantages of informed consent, it is still vital to talk about the shortcomings involved. It is important for health care professionals to understand the disadvantages of informed consent just as much as the advantages so that they can prevent these drawbacks, if possible. The disadvantages I will be discussing in this section is the act of coercion and undue influence, emergency situations and special circumstances where informed consent does not apply, and therapeutic privilege. When informing patients about their care options, the health care provider may be convinced that one way is the best and may inadvertently pressure a patient to make a different decision than they originally

Undue influence, like coercion, may be obvious or subtle, an obvious example may be that the health care professional will buy everyone ice cream who participates in a research study. A subtle example of undue influence could be that a health care provider suggests that the patient should take an investigational medication because everyone is taking it. Even though there is not an explicit incentive in my last example it still qualifies as undue influence because there could be the incentive of “fitting in” or being cool (Baillie, McGeehan, Garrett, & Garrett,

Therapeutic privilege is the idea that if the health care provider discloses information to a patient it may harm them more than help them. The concept of therapeutic privilege is tricky because it must be well documented that omitting the information is in the patient’s best interest. Also, in most cases, therapeutic privilege does not completely overrule informed consent. The health care provider must provide any information to the patient that they judge not to cause harm to the patient. For example, they may not disclose the diagnosis immediately but may explain and gain consent for the preferred treatment option. Also, most of the time therapeutic privilege is temporary, and later the provider discusses the information previously omitted (The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists,