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Article: Informed consent and perioperative nursing.
- Article from:
- AORN Journal
- Article date:
- January 1, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Association of Operating Room Nurses, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Autonomy and privacy are the foundations of consent. The principle of autonomy, or self-governance, holds that every person has the right to determine what will be done to his or her body. Privacy is the right to be left alone. When the concept of informed consent was introduced, it was alien to traditional medical thinking. Until then, a related principle, paternalism, assumed that physicians were in a position to influence patients to agree to procedures deemed to be in the patients' best interests.
Physician-based informed consent receives more attention than when the consent process involves a nurse and a patient. Much of what nurses undertake involves ...