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