Legal nature and meaning of the patient's consent to a medical procedure

The presented study contains a discussion of key issues concerning the legal nature and meaning of a patient's consent to a medical procedure. The considerations concerning consent were set in two mutually complementary research planes, the first of which covered the issues of the civil law construction of consent, while the second focused on the legal-medical, practical aspects of its granting. The analysis focused on the legal nature of consent and its place in the classification of legal events concerning the issues of 'capacity to be a patient' and competence to give consent, as well as on conflicts of legally protected goods emerging in practice, taking into account the maternal-fetal conflict. The medico-legal strand examined in parallel covered, inter alia, the definition of patient and medical action, the topics of information and information and the form of consent. The whole is completed by the issues of consent for non-therapeutic medical actions and an attempt to determine the limits of the patient's effective disposal of his or her own personal well-being, taking into account the issues of pro futuro declarations of intent. In addition to its scientific value, the work is of practical value to legal practitioners, doctors and other medical practitioners and students of law and medicine. The legal nature of consent and the practical consequences of granting or refusing to grant it, as presented in the work, may be of interest to anyone wishing to know their rights as a patient.