Ethical pitfalls of informed consent to biological tests

Introduction
Favoring the development of appropriate tools to afford better workers’ interpretations of biological tests calls for a contextual adaptation of informed consent. The main objective is to better understand ethical pitfalls pertaining to this adaptation. Ethical pitfalls can be defined as ambiguous and problematic areas that may be traps, that is, areas where particular attention must be paid when transposing theoretical ethics in various contexts of workers’ informed consent.

Methods
The ethical pitfalls were formalized by interviewing fourteen workers recently submitted to biological tests and by considering data from the literature. The data were subjected to qualitative analysis using a constant-comparison method.

Results
The pitfalls point to some of the difficulties involved in transposing theoretical ethics to the context of occupational health practice: pitfalls emanating from the ethical principle of autonomy, as well as the definition of capacity to consent, the definition of risks, and content of required information have been identified

Discussion
Avoidance of the ethical pitfalls necessitates greater awareness and relativization of the various characteristics of informed consent for workers, by education and training about the ethical elements intrinsic to this concept. In this way, a better and beneficial participation of workers in decisions regarding their occupational health could be achieved.