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informed consent

American

noun

a patient's consent to a medical or surgical procedure or to participation in a clinical study after being properly advised of the relevant medical facts and the risks involved.

Etymology

Origin of informed consent

First recorded in 1965–70

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Cancer centers have rigorous informed consent protocols before treatment, reflecting ethical standards that were only emerging in the early transplant days.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 19, 2026

Half of Scotland's 32 councils pulled out of the census following concerns about a lack of informed consent and worries over the anonymity for pupils.

From BBC • Feb. 22, 2026

That included informed consent, as well as questioning the ethics of prescribing “nothing.”

From Slate • Jan. 30, 2026

“We are restoring the balance of informed consent to parents whose newborns face little risk of contracting hepatitis B,” the CDC’s acting director, Jim O’Neill, said in a statement.

From Barron's • Dec. 17, 2025

And it would be decades before anyone thought to ask whether informed consent should apply in cases like Henrietta’s, where scientists conduct research on tissues no longer attached to a person’s body.

From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023