Consent based on trust rather than information?











Information and trust seem here to go hand in hand.

Pär Segerdahl



This post in Swedish

We like real-life ethics : www.ethicsblog.crb.uu.se

3 Responses to Consent based on trust rather than information?

  1. Matthew Cote, MD says:

    Trust as a moral equivalent to information disclosure for medical research participation is an alluring concept. Certainly, trust forms an essential component of any doctor patient relationship. It is an underlying assumption of the modern practice of medicine. It is why a person will voluntarily present to a doctor’s office, change out of their clothes into a gown, and discuss personal problems with their medical provider who is other a complete stranger to them. Patients trust in the training and professionalism of the medical providers. They also trust that the medical providers goal is the best health interests of the patient. There was a time when that trust was so strong, that patient’s didn’t want or need to understand the reasoning behind the doctor’s diagnosis or treatment plan. The modern practice of medicine is swinging away from this paternalistic approach to patient care, but it remains rare for a patient to fully question all the options available to them and select an option different than that recommended by their provider. At the end of the day, patients trust that their physician or medical provider is going to treat them based on a pure motive of what is in the patient’s best interest.

    In the case of most medical research, however, a medical provider can’t make any assertion about whether participation is in the patient’s best interest. By definition, the provider doesn’t know whether the experimental treatment will be better than the standard treatment, or cause health complications or side effects with worse outcomes. The very purpose of the experiment is to answer those questions. Therefore, even under a paternalistic philosophy of medical practice, an honest practitioner cannot recommend participation in a trial to a patient on the basis of it being in the patient’s best interest. It might be, and it might not – or it could be worse. As a result, consent to research cannot be ethically based on trust alone when the basis for that trust is the assumption that the medical provider will only seek the good of the patient. The provider cannot make that assertion in medical research. The danger of trust based consent is that the motivation of the medical provider is no longer purely what is in the patient’s best interest, but is now clouded by the providers desire to pursue the research and the providers need for patients to participate in order to get the project completed. This poses a clear conflict of interest that is unavoidable, necessitating that the provider take themselves out of any decision making role. In a few limited situations, such as the biobank example, participation does not pose additional risk or benefit to the individual, and the burden of informed consent specificity is thereby lessened. It would be wrong, however, to consider the need for informed consent obviated, however. The limitations of informed consent are challenging enough, given that they are predicated on the underlying trust patients have for their doctors and by association, health institutions, making them predisposed to participate. Still, informed consent remains the primary ethically appropriate way to enroll patients in medical research, the burden of which is not overly onerous. Unless, of course, we desire to take advantage of and ultimately erode the underlying trust that forms the basis of the relationship between a patient and their doctor.

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