Informed Consent in Graduate Education in Croatia

Abstract

Along with research on informed consent (since 1972), the need emerged to introduce this problem into bioethical education. Graduate education offers the possibility for scientific analysis of professional moral dilemmas with which physicians and related health care professionals are confronted when performing their professional activities. The issue especially relates to the patronizing relationship with patients, their traditional position, the realization of patients´ rights, duties of physicians and related health care professionals towards patients, and ethical matters in biomedical research. The answers to these issues, which contain the specification of informed consent, cannot be found exclusively in medicine and are a topic of social and human sciences. This article stresses the interdisciplinary approach towards researching informed consent, explains the relationship between informed consent and bioethics and philosophy, and presents the legal framework for informed consent in Croatia. The author then proceeds to define the problem of informed consent in the teaching curriculum and the simplification of objectives and tasks in learning about informed consent. Methods and examples of pedagogical and andragogical principles used to help comprise this program are offered, and methods used to achieve it are provided.