2023-06-07 02:37:06
A patient requests compensation from a dental clinic for moral damages derived from an exodontia performed on which she says she did not provide informed consent.
Article 8 of the patient autonomy law establishes that consent will be verbal as a general rule. However, it will be provided in writing in cases of surgical intervention, invasive diagnostic and therapeutic procedures and, in general, in the application of procedures that involve risks or inconveniences with noticeable and foreseeable negative repercussions on the patient’s health.
Based on the above and, given that it is an extraction and, therefore, an invasive treatment, in principle, there should be written consent. However, this does not imply that the absence of informed consent generates an obligation to compensate automatically.
As the STS of March 4, 2011 points out, the lack of information implies medical malpractice that is not only relevant from the point of view of the imputation but is also a consequence that the norm ensures that it does not happen, for allow the patient to be able to exercise with full knowledge the right to decision-making autonomy that best suits their interests, but something different are the effects produced by this lack of informed consent, regardless of whether the medical intervention is carried out correctly, as an autonomous claim that is based on damage and that this is a consequence of the uninformed medical act.
No damage, no liability. The lack of information, says the judgment of September 27, 2001, and reiterates that of May 10, 2006 and October 23, 2008, “is not as per a cause of pecuniary compensation, which seems logical when the result is not different from what a person expected when undergoing a certain medical treatment or surgical intervention.
In addition, the effects caused by the lack of information are especially linked to the type of intervention (necessary or satisfactory), being more rigorous in the satisfactory than in the necessary.
Therefore, if the extractions were necessary, there was verbal information, and it is not proven that an injury occurred, there is no damage derived from the medical action, since it cannot be affirmed that the patient could have adopted a decision other than the extractions. Agustin Sanchez, lawyer
#Verbal #written #information #consent #medical #acts #Health #Medicine