Professional Practice

Autonomy (respecting a patient's right to make their own decisions), beneficence (acting in the patient's best interest), nonmaleficence ('first, do no harm'), and justice (fair distribution of benefits, risks, and resources).

Autonomy requires respecting a competent patient's right to make their own informed decisions about their care, including the right to refuse recommended treatment even when refusal may lead to harm or death.

Disclosure (of diagnosis, the proposed treatment, risks/benefits, and alternatives including no treatment), decision-making capacity, and voluntariness (free of coercion). Many list it as: the patient must be informed, competent/capacitated, and choosing voluntarily.

The diagnosis, the nature/purpose of the proposed intervention, its risks and benefits, reasonable alternatives (and their risks/benefits), and the risks/benefits of declining (no treatment).

Emergency (implied consent when delay threatens life/limb and the patient cannot consent), patient waiver (patient declines to be informed), lack of decision-making capacity (use a surrogate), and therapeutic privilege (rare—withholding info that would severely harm the patient). Some add legally mandated treatment.

A narrow, rarely invoked exception allowing a clinician to withhold information during consent when disclosure itself would so severely harm the patient (e.g., precipitate acute psychological decompensation) that it is contraindicated. It must not be used merely to obtain agreement.