Study About Medical Obligation To Inform And Duty

Medical obligation to inform means that medical institutions and staff should describe medical acts and other medical matters fully and factually towards patients. Doctors' obligation to inform originates from doctors' general duty of care. With gradual appearance of the importance of obligation to inform, it departs from general duty of care and becomes an independent doctors' obligation. It is in 1960s that doctors' obligation to inform formed on the legal basis of patients' independent decision-making power and was gradually established with foreign judges' judicial practice. Its purpose is to improve patients' status during treatment, to honor patients' minds and to help them to deal with matters concerned with their personal value.Though taking the foundation of medical contract as the basis, medical obligation to inform gradually becomes one part of legal obligations with the development of patients' rights movement. In medical contracts, medical obligation to inform mainly exists in two stages. In the process of diagnosis, medical sides should perform the obligation to make explanation about referral, check and diagnosis towards patients. And in the following process of treatments, medical sides should tell patients related information of medical measures that medical sides plan to take, including contents, ways and purposes of clinic program, the risk caused by sequelae and complications that may happen and attention that should be paid to convalescence after the treatment.If medical sides don't perform or not perform according to the facts in the process mentioned above, it is possible that medical sides should bear tort liability because their medical acts lose the basis of fitness act. At the same time, because obligation to inform is one part of the obligations in the medical contract, medical sides perhaps have to bear corresponding contracting fault liability or breach of contract responsibility. When medical sides break obligation to inform and competing tort liability and breach of contract responsibility happens, victims can choose breach of contract responsibility or tort liability to protect their rights according to the rule of No. 122 in Contract Law.