informed consent

American  

noun

1. 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.

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Etymology

Origin of informed consent

First recorded in 1965–70

Example Sentences

Bristol surgeon Tony Dixon was removed from the medical register last year for serious misconduct, including performing unnecessary surgeries, using surgical mesh to treat bowl complaints without patient's informed consent, and fabricating patient records.

From BBC • Apr. 20, 2026

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

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

Although this attitude wasn’t uncommon at the time, NIH guidelines stipulated that all human subject research funded by NIH—as McKusick’s was —required both informed consent and approval from a Hopkins review board.

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