Therapeutic Privilege

Therapeutic Exception

An exception to the need for informed consent—not just consent, but properly informed consent—which ostensibly allows a doctor to withhold information from a patient out of concern that full disclosure might psychologically harm the patient and thus imperil the patient’s physical health or when full delineation of a procedure’s details might cause a patient to forego an operation that the doctor believes is in the patient’s best interest or his/her only option for improved quality of life and/or survival

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therapeutic privilege

Therapeutic exception Medical ethics A paternalistic principle under which truth is withheld from a Pt out of concern that if the details of a procedure are fully delineated, the Pt may choose to forego an operation that the physician believes is in the Pt's best interest or only option for improved quality of life and/or survival. See Arato v Avedon, Information overload, Doctor-patient interaction, Paternalism, Therapeutic privilege doctrine.