What is the legal obligation of a doctor to provide a patient with sufficient information about a proposed treatment or procedure?
British Columbia, Canada
The following excerpt is from Cojocaru (Guardian Ad Litem) v. British Columbia Women's Hospital, 2009 BCSC 494 (CanLII):
Individuals have the right to make their own health care decisions. In order to exercise this right in a meaningful way, a patient needs sufficient information to make an informed choice about medical treatment. Thus, except in limited circumstances, doctors are under a legal obligation to provide a patient with material information relating to a proposed treatment or procedure: Hopp v. Lepp, supra. This obligation has been called the ‘doctrine of informed consent’ or, in some cases, the ‘duty of disclosure’.
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