Revising Medical Consent Forms: An Empirical Model and Test

Recent years have brought increasing pressure from the public and the courts for truly informed patient consents to medical treatment and surgical procedures. Many courts have recognized that a patient's signature on a consent form is no assurance that the patient has received sufficient information, much less that he or she truly understood the information. A Pennsylvania court articulated this principle this way: [S]ince the patient must rely on the physician to tell her of all the appropriate risks, the physician cannot discharge this duty by having the patient execute a form which states that the risks have been explained. The courts will look beyond forms signed by patients to determine if the duty to inform has been discharged.