ANALYSIS OF THE HIGH COURT DECISIONS ON INFORMED CONSENT CASES IN TURKEY FROM A FORENSIC POINT OF VIEW

Year 2018, Volume: 2 Issue: 3, 125 - 134, 31.07.2018

Esin Akgül Kalkan

Abstract

Informed consent is linked to the principle of patient
autonomy and has an important place in common medical codes of conduct and
legislative regulations. The aim of this study is to determine the judgments
and reviews of the high court (Yargıtay) related to informed consent and to
discuss them from a medicolegal aspect within Turkish jurisprudence. In the search engine of the website
publishing high court decisions, the keywords “informed consent”,
“information”, “consent” and “assent” were used without any date limitation. In
this study, N=32 high court judgments were investigated. The data obtained were analyzed in light of
the literature and guidelines. In 23 of the cases (71.9%) surgical
interventions requiring general anesthesia were performed. In the other 9 cases
(28.1%) surgical interventions not requiring general anesthesia and medical
interventions with diagnostic and/or treatment purposes were performed. There
was a statistically significant difference between the groups with informed
consent and without informed consent for “surgical interventions not requiring
general anesthesia and medical interventions with diagnostic and/or treatment purposes”.
The high court identified that in 17 of the cases (53.1%) informed consent was
not present while in 15 (46.9%) informed consent was obtained. The court could
not prove that informed consent was obtained in 15/17 cases in the group
without consent, while in 7/15 cases in the consent group inadequate informed
consent was obtained. The high court interrogated the extent and adequacy of
informed consent for all types of surgical interventions both requiring and not
requiring general anesthesia and medical interventions with diagnostic and/or
treatment purposes. The types of surgical and medical interventions that
require written informed consent and the aims of informed consent should be
re-evaluated.

Keywords

inadequate informed consent, malpractice, physician

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