Informed Consent: How Much Does the Patient Understand?

Freis was a pioneer in controlled clinical trials, and by the late 1970s and early 1980s, as such trials became standard procedures, some ethicists and other medical professionals expressed concern about how well participating patients understood the risks they agreed to take. In this article, Bergler, Pennington, Metcalfe, and Freis reported the results of a study they ran in which hypertension patients were tested for comprehension and recall of information contained in the informed consent statements.