Usually, before you and another individual engage in an activity together, you make sure you’re both A-OK with the situation. If either one or both of you aren’t confident in the idea, then it’s probably a bad idea.

Without a genuine will on both sides, what can you get out of it except misery? That’s the essence of the medical policy known as informed consent.

More often than not, doctors have plenty of reason to believe that a certain action is the perfect answer to a patient’s problem. However, they usually choose not to demand it, because the patient has their own unique way of thinking and feeling.

As a result, it is standard for physicians to thoroughly inform a client of any potential solution and probable disadvantages prior to every treatment. Once that’s all made clear, the client—unless they’re younger than the “consent age” or somehow mentally unable to make a confident choice, in which case someone else would need to make the call—can decide whether or not it’s worth the risk.

If:

  1. The condition in question allows for plenty of time for medical attention.
  2. The patient isn’t too stressed or anxious to be flexible.

Then informed consent is considered absolutely mandatory. Otherwise, the doctor can legally skip it to ensure the patient’s well-being. At minimum, the doctor is required to mention the most probable negative effects of the considered treatment; not every possibility is necessarily important to mention.