A physician should be required to ensure that a patient is fully informed about medical interventions, including treatment strategies, potential benefits, and risks, before the patient agrees to them. A patient's right to self-determination, right to ...
A physician should be required to ensure that a patient is fully informed about medical interventions, including treatment strategies, potential benefits, and risks, before the patient agrees to them. A patient's right to self-determination, right to life, and right to bodily integrity can be safeguarded through a legal and ethical process that ensures the patient understands the medical interventions being proposed. Through this process, a patient can assess whether the medical interventions will benefit their health or pose risks, and decide whether to participate in them.
In medical treatments, a patient's mental status may be regarded as abnormal due to illness, raising questions about whether a patient can fully engage in the process of informed consent. This issue has been framed as a question of whether a patient has decision-making capacity, and in the Republic of Korea, scholars have been debating this issue to the present day. Since the concept of decision-making capacity in medical treatment is not tied to legal actions, it can be distinguished from the concept of a person's capacity as defined in the Civil Act. The former has not yet been explicitly defined by the legislature. Many scholars have attempted to define the concept of decision-making capacity in medical contexts, and the courts in the Republic of Korea have also engaged with this issue.
Therefore, the author of this paper raises the question of whether decision-making capacity can be clearly distinguished from self-determination capacity in the context of informed consent, as both terms have been used by the courts and referenced by the legislature.
The primary purposes of informed consent in medical interventions are to ensure a patient's right to self-determination, right to life, and right to physical integrity. Among the issues in the doctrine of informed consent in the Republic of Korea that have been debated, this paper focuses on the principle that a physician should provide fully disclosed information about medical interventions to the patient. In light of these purposes, the author hypothesizes that the concepts of self-determination capacity and decision-making capacity can be distinguished and that they should be separately evaluated in the context of medical interventions. The author will review relevant legislative acts, case law, and literature to support this hypothesis.
If the author's hypothesis is supported by compelling evidence, it will clarify the physician's role and responsibility in the informed consent process. This would help to strengthen the protection of a patient's rights to self-determination, life, and physical integrity. Moreover, it would enable physicians to effectively provide fully disclosed information to patients and their guardians during medical interventions and obtain informed consent. Ultimately, this study aims to illuminate the doctrine of informed consent, contributing to the protection of patients' rights and the assurance of physicians in medical interventions.