Using the patient’s worldview to challenge his or her decision and establish a treatment plan—implying the view is shared by the physician when it is not—could be seen as manipulative and deceptive.
The growing number of web-savvy patients alters the power dynamic in the patient-physician relationship. In the older model of care, physicians served as unchallenged experts who alone devised therapeutic plans for patients.
Having implied that a particular clinical decision had been made to “free up a hospital bed,” the attending physician walked away without further comments to the residents or talking with the patient.
Approximately two-thirds of men aged 50 and older diagnosed REM sleep behavior disorder develop neurologic disease, for which there is no prevention or treatment at present.
People have a social obligation to conform to the general rules of sleeping: sleep at night, in a bed, in a private place away from public view, and in proper attire.
Physicians make patients aware of those interventions that they (the patients) may then refuse. In short, informed consent is less about patient decisions than it is about restraining physicians.