Informed consent in clinical practice: bioethical conception of a critical approach

Abstract

This article aims to present the category of Informed Consent in Clinical Practice in the light of Latin American Bioethics, from a bibliographical review of the articles published in the main health data-bases (LILACS, BIREME, PUBMED), presenting a critical analysis. Bioethics can conduct a work beyond disciplinary fields by utilizing traditional and popular knowledge. For that, the de-colonization of thought appears as a privileged method in order to understand the problems related to the informed consent, since it revises the hierarchies stablished by the modern-colonial project, mainly the ones stablished between the social and institutional relations as well as the ones stablished between the scientific knowing and the traditional one. We conclude that the informed consent that aims to be effective must modify the paternalist relation between the involved parts.