“‘The Principle of respect for patient autonomy has attained too much importance in English medical law; the rights and interests of parties other than the patient should be better accounted for.’ Discuss, with reference to the law governing confidentiality and the treatment of incompetent patients.”

The central issue of this essay appears to be the concept of consent and thus I will examine the different ways of giving your consent in differing situations. I will start by giving a brief outline on the conditions for competent adults to give consent to treatment and analyse the extent to which this group makes an autonomous decision. I will then go on to analyse the law surrounding incompetent adults means of consenting to treatment as this illustrates the approach taken by the courts when an individual is incapable of consenting. This will have covered giving consent with regards to treatment but then I must look at the area of patient information and how this information is released, is it a completely autonomous decision on behalf of the patient? I will conclude that in fact the interests of other parties other than the patient are accounted for in certain situations and that t…(short extract)