Patient's Autonomy, Privacy and Informed Consent (Biomedical and Health Research, 40)

This is a literature overview intended for nursing and medical professionals, those responsible for the design of ethics courses, and researchers. Focus is on legal norms and professional codes in the UK and four other European countries, and on how patient rights are realized in everyday nursing situations. Specific areas addressed are patients' autonomy, privacy, and informed consent. This report was written as part of a project supported through the BIOMED 2 program by the European Commission. Material is also of interest to individual clients and patient organizations. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

In this publication: large overview in literature in patients’ autonomy, privacy and informed consent has been made. Generally, this has a special importance for many groups, because of that the patients’ rights have been emphased during 1990s in Europe and also in other countries. For example, WHO published a declaration on the promotion of patients’ rights in Europe in 1994 and there are many countries working with the legislation of patients’ rights. So, this publication gives a good view over the literature in the area.<>/P>

* Also, in the publication the are collected the laws and ethical codes, referring to this topic. This is also important: usually they are not in the same book.

* In ethics, there is not so much empirical research done. In this book, we have tried to describe the ethical research made in this area.

* In more special areas, the book is important for nurses/health care workers in surgical nursing (informed consent has a special importance here, particulary in day-care-surgery), elderly care and maternity care, because of that these groups have been under special interest.