Clinical, ethical and legal issues on medical information to patients and relatives

Providing information to patients and relatives (IPAR) is a clinical, ethical and legal need. IPAR is inherent to the medical team work as diagnostic and therapeutic procedures are. In some cases, it is a key step for patient's recovery. From an ethical point of view, the patient is not only the subject of the medical work but also its main owner and who must, previously informed, decide about options which would directly affect him. After the promulgation of a special law in Chile, this prerogative became a legal right. This paper proposes an empirically developed model or protocol that should be used to inform hospitalized patients and their relatives about their disease, in a pertinent way. Considering that IPAR is a skill that should be learned and practiced, the written protocol is provided to neurology residents as supporting material. Although IPAR protocols are completely justified, they have not been evaluated in terms of efficiency of communication, user satisfaction, patient and relatives reassurance and clinical impact. Therefore, they require a prospective validation.