Strengthening Informed Consent as an Effort to Prevent Medical Disputes and Improve Patient Protection

Abstract

Informed consent is an important instrument in health services that serves to ensure the patient's right to obtain adequate information before determining medical action against him. In practice, the implementation of informed consent still faces various problems, including limited information, low patient understanding, suboptimal communication, and the tendency to make consent an administrative formality. This condition can cause differences in understanding between patients and medical personnel and increase the potential for medical disputes. This study aims to analyze the implementation of informed consent from the perspective of health law and examine its strengthening as an effort to prevent medical disputes and improve legal protection for patients. The research uses normative legal research methods with a legislative approach and a conceptual approach. Legal materials are analyzed descriptive-analytically to obtain an overview of the position, implementation, and problems of informed consent in the legal relationship between patients and medical personnel. The results show that informed consent is not solely a consent document, but a communication process that provides an opportunity for patients to understand the diagnosis, medical measures, benefits, risks, alternative course of action, and possible consequences. Therefore, strengthening informed consent needs to be done through improving the quality of communication of medical personnel, providing easy-to-understand information, strengthening documentation, implementing standard operating procedures, and using technology appropriately. The strengthening is expected to increase legal certainty, prevent misunderstandings, reduce the potential for medical disputes, and realize more optimal legal protection for patients and medical personnel.