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Full-Text Articles in Medical Jurisprudence
Choosing Medical Malpractice, Nadia N. Sawicki
Choosing Medical Malpractice, Nadia N. Sawicki
Nadia N. Sawicki
Modern principles of patient autonomy and health care consumerism are at odds with medical malpractice law's traditional skepticism towards the defenses of contractual waiver and assumption of risk. Many American courts follow a patient-protective view, exemplified by the reasoning in the seminal Tunkl case, rejecting any attempts by physicians to relieve themselves of liability on the grounds of a patient's agreement to assume the risk of malpractice. However, where patients pursue unconventional treatments that satisfy their personal preferences but that arguably fall outside the standard of care, courts have good reason to be more receptive to such defenses. This Article …
Modernizing Informed Consent: Expanding The Boundaries Of Materiality, Nadia N. Sawicki
Modernizing Informed Consent: Expanding The Boundaries Of Materiality, Nadia N. Sawicki
Nadia N. Sawicki
Informed consent law’s emphasis on the disclosure of purely medical information – such as diagnosis, prognosis, and the risks and benefits of various treatment alternatives – does not accurately reflect modern understandings of how patients make medical decisions. Existing common law disclosure duties fail to capture a variety of non-medical factors relevant to patients, including information about the physician’s personal characteristics; the cost of treatment; the social implications of various health care interventions; and the legal consequences associated with diagnosis and treatment. Although there is a wealth of literature analyzing the merits of such disclosures in a few narrow contexts, …
Informed Consent And Patients' Rights In Japan: 2001 Epilogue, Robert B. Leflar
Informed Consent And Patients' Rights In Japan: 2001 Epilogue, Robert B. Leflar
Robert B Leflar
Japan is on a steeper trajectory toward the incorporation of informed consent principles into medical practice than the “gradual transformation” observed in a 1996 article, Informed Consent and Patients’ Rights in Japan. Among the most significant recent developments from 1996 to 2001 have been these seven: (1) the 1997 enactment of the Organ Transplantation Law permitting the use of brain death criteria in limited circumstances in which informed consent is present; (2) the strengthening of patients’ rights in clinical drug trials; (3) the continued trend toward increasing disclosure to patients of cancer diagnoses; (4) initiatives by the health ministry toward …
Informed Consent And Patients' Rights In Japan, Robert B. Leflar
Informed Consent And Patients' Rights In Japan, Robert B. Leflar
Robert B Leflar
This article analyzes the development of the concept of informed consent in the context of the culture and economics of Japanese medicine, and locates that development within the framework of the nation's civil law system. Part II sketches the cultural foundations of medical paternalism in Japan; explores the economic incentives (many of them administratively directed) that have sustained physicians' traditional dominant roles; and describes the judiciary's hesitancy to challenge physicians' professional discretion. Part III delineates the forces testing the paternalist model: the undermining of the physicians' personal knowledge of their patients that accompanies the shift from neighborhood clinic to high-tech …