What is the duty of a medical professional to disclose to a patient about a proposed procedure?
British Columbia, Canada
The following excerpt is from Kern v. Forest, 2010 BCSC 938 (CanLII):
Canadian health care professionals owe a duty to their patients to disclose “the nature of a proposed operation, its gravity, any material risks and any special or unusual risks attendant upon the performance of the operation”: Hopp v. Lepp, 1980 CanLII 14 (SCC), [1980] 2 S.C.R. 192 at 210, 112 D.L.R. (3d) 67. A patient is entitled to know something about the procedure to be performed, the likelihood of its success, and the risks involved in the procedure. She is also entitled to know about alternative methods of treatment or procedures and the risks involved in those alternatives. Without this information, the patient is not in a position to make an educated choice between going ahead with the proposed treatment and foregoing it.
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