Informed consent is a distinct malpractice theory from ordinary treatment negligence: the claim is not that the doctor botched the procedure, but that the doctor performed a procedure — however skillfully — without first giving the patient the information a patient needs to decide whether to consent to it at all. The doctrine treats bodily autonomy as the interest being protected, so a technically successful surgery can still give rise to liability if the patient was never told about a material risk that, had she known it, would have led her to refuse or choose a different course.

Every state recognizes some version of the duty, but they differ on the legal standard used to measure what must be disclosed, which makes informed consent one of the more state-dependent doctrines in medical malpractice practice.

States generally follow one of two tests. The 'physician-based' (or professional custom) standard asks what a reasonable practitioner in the same field would have disclosed under the circumstances, usually proven through expert testimony about customary practice. The 'patient-based' (or materiality) standard, followed by a substantial number of states, asks instead what a reasonable patient would consider material to the decision, regardless of customary physician practice. Which standard applies changes both the proof required and the practical difficulty of the claim.

Even where nondisclosure of a material risk is proven, the plaintiff typically must also show causation — that adequate disclosure would have changed the treatment decision. Most jurisdictions apply an objective test (would a reasonable patient in the plaintiff's position have declined or chosen differently), though a minority use a subjective test asking what this particular patient would have done.

Disclosure duties give way in defined situations: genuine emergencies where obtaining consent is not practically possible, situations where the patient has validly waived disclosure, and — in a shrinking number of jurisdictions — a narrow 'therapeutic privilege' where disclosure itself would be seriously harmful to the patient. Courts read these exceptions narrowly because they cut against the autonomy interest the doctrine exists to protect.

Juricratic separates the informed-consent claim path into its own decision nodes — materiality of the undisclosed risk, the applicable jurisdictional standard, and the would-have-declined causation question — rather than folding it into a generic negligence dial. Because the standard itself is jurisdiction-dependent, it is modeled as a structural toggle, not a probability dial, so the sensitivity analysis correctly shows a discrete jump in exposure rather than a smooth gradient when the applicable law changes.