Historically, the process of obtaining patients’ consent as a feature of clinical practice has its roots in the common law, which continues to evolve to the present day. This discussion begins with the structure of the legal system through statute law, common law, and customary law, tracing the development of consent from the need to provide clinicians with a legal defence, as it originally was, to the subsequent shift in terms of an ethical obligation towards the rights of patients. This includes the responsibility of risk communication according to what matters to patients – what is otherwise known as ‘material risks’.
Professor Al Dowie FRCP Edin, Professor of Medical Ethics and Law, University of Glasgow.
At the University of Glasgow, founded in 1451, the teaching of medicine began in 1637, and its Medical School was formed a century later. Al Dowie is its first Professor of Medical Ethics and Law. He is the lead academic in this subject area for the Dental School, and also for the Medical School and the Nursing School. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. In 2025 he was a visiting research professor at the University of Rome (‘La Sapienza’), where he worked collaboratively on the history of medical ethics as a resource for teaching.
