Study On Legal Issues Of Agency Of Informed Consent Of Patients

Informed consent of patients is designed to protect patients from unlawful abuse ofhuman dignity and health in the medical process, and it is also an effective means ofalleviating the physician-patient relationship and reducing medical disputes. However,because of special reasons, patients cannot own the implementation of the right toinformed consent in actual clinical process, and thus the agency appears. But this couldbring many problems and cause the legal and ethical thinking. From the legal point ofview, this paper analyze the agency of informed consent of patients，identifies thedeficiencies in our current health laws, regulations, rules, and puts forward thecorresponding improvement measures to protect the rights of patients.In addition to the introduction and conclusion, the paper is divided into five parts:In the first part, we give an overview on the informed consent of patient and theagency. First of all, from development history of patients’ informed consent, itexperienced the development from ethics to law. In the future, people will focus onimproving the specific provisions of the realization of rights, especially on the agencyproblem. Secondly, it analyzes the connotation of the informed consent of patients andemphasized that the right is composed of three indispensable parts, which are informed,understanding and agree. Again, it analyzes the realized condition of informed consentof patients, which points out that the need of the agency because of lack of ability toagree. Finally, it summarizes the legal concepts, the legal characteristics and theeffective exercise of the elements.In the second part, agency of informed consent of patients’ scope, rights andobligations are analyzed. Based on the main scope of subject of right of informedconsent of patients, we could obtain the scope of the agency exercise. We explained therights of the agents from two aspects of the right to know and the right to agree. Fromthe view of duty of care, we elaborated obligation of the agents in the medical activities,and the legal consequences and responsibility in the exercise of agency behavior.In the third part, this paper expounds the different conditions that need the agency.The article analyzes the agency problems in four cases of juveniles, mental patients,terminal patients and emergency patients respectively.In the fourth part, we summarizes the deficiencies of current regulation of agency of informed consent of patients:1, Subject and agents chaos of informed consent ofpatients;2, Related laws and regulations expressions are not rigorous;3, Have noconsideration of the conflict between agent behavior and patient life health;4, Do notsort the exercise of agents’ rights;5, Lack of corresponding relief procedure.In the fifth part, according to the deficiencies discussed in previous paragraphs, wesuggest making a medical law, in which we suggest to improve the agency of informedconsent of patients in the following aspects:1. Establish the dominant position ofpatients’ rights;2. Establish the best interests principle of patients;3. Make the order ofagency clear;4. Based on independent role of the hospital ethics committee and theestablishment of the Judiciary as the third-party relief mechanism, we could improve thecorresponding relief system of the rights.