PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - M. Sara Rosenthal
TI  - Informed Consent in the Nuclear Medicine Setting
AID  - 10.2967/jnmt.110.083931
DP  - 2011 Mar 01
TA  - Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
PG  - jnmt.110.083931
4099  - http://tech.snmjournals.org/content/early/2011/02/14/jnmt.110.083931.short
4100  - http://tech.snmjournals.org/content/early/2011/02/14/jnmt.110.083931.full
AB  - In the nuclear medicine setting, the task of obtaining informed consent for procedures that require it is frequently left to the nuclear medicine technologist. Unfortunately, a patient's signature on a consent form does not mean the patient has given informed consent, or what legal scholars call valid consent. On completion of this scholarly bioethics article, the reader will understand the troubled history that led to informed consent as social and regulatory policy. Additionally, the reader will discover the meaning of “informed consent,” which includes 3 critical components: disclosure, decision-making capacity, and voluntariness. Finally, this article will discuss which nuclear medicine procedures require informed consent, how to assess whether patients have given informed consent, what to do when the patient refuses a procedure, and what to do when informed consent is unachievable.