Date: 25Sep 2019
SYNOPSIS:
Speaker:
Dr Michael Dunn
Lecturer in Health and Social Care Ethics, The Ethox Centre, University of Oxford
Visiting Lecturer, Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong
This seminar will focus centrally on disputing the claim that the new test of materiality articulated in Montgomery equates with respect for autonomy being given primacy in re-shaping English law in this area. In defending this position, it will also be argued that such a revised interpretation of Montgomery’s significance does not equate with the Court failing to give due consideration to what is owed to patients as autonomous decision-makers. Instead, Montgomery correctly implies that doctors are ethically (and legally) obliged to attend to a number of relevant moral considerations in framing decisions about consent to treatment, which require subtle interpretations of the values of autonomy and well-being. Doctors should give appropriate consideration to how these values are fleshed out and balanced in context in order to specify precisely what information ought to be disclosed to a patient as a requirement of obtaining consent, and as a core component of shared decision-making within medical encounters more generally. FULL DETAILS
