Research on the Actual Conditions of Informed Consent in Contemporary America

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The medical thought has received the great revolutionary change at the 70's of American society. People questioned the arbitrary paternalistic power of physicians and insisted the rights of self-determinations as well as repudiate doctors treat patients as the objects of manipulation. These situations I named 'the revolution of medical thoughts'.The aims of this research are to analyze the actual conditions on how physicians and patients are pursuing the informed consent in the contemporary United States, and to make clear the course of these development toward the 21st. century. For that sake I tried to do the participant observation and some interviews with medical people and patients at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Medical Hospital of Georgetown University, and Medical Hospital of San Francisco State University, as well as to analyze huge materials of study reports I have collected.As the results of these field researches I can confirm the following points. (1)The informed consent is institutionalized firmly and is conducted actually. (2)Many such professions other than physicians as bioethicists, medical sociologists, medical social workers, psychologists take part in at the hospitals of the United States. (3)People consider the informed consent is not the duties of only physicians also the duties of all medical professions as well as patients. (4)The informed consent is necessary even though patients are children or mentally handicapped persons, for not only family members but also patients themselves. (5)For the sake of that, medical people inform patient's medical situations to themselves undurstandablly by using videos, pictures, many kind of panels. (6)Many hospitals have manuals of informed consent.In general doctor-patient relationship was changed dramatically and doctor's paternalistic despotism was disappeared because American medical world has experienced 'the revolution of medical thoughts'.