Five Coffin Nails to Informed Consent: An Autoethnography of Suffering Complications in Breastfeeding

Abstract

This autoethnography describes an illness episode caused by breastfeeding complications. It focuses on informed consent processes accompanying this illness episode. Informed consent is a cornerstone of ethical medical practice and has to be obtained before a medical intervention can legally be implemented. It is therefore not trivial that in practice, informed consent processes often fail to achieve what they are set out to. With this autoethnography, I want to provide a review of how informed consent processes can fail in the context of breastfeeding, but also draw attention to what these situations can mean and feel like for those affected. I provide in-depth descriptions of five scenes from my illness episode each representing a different barrier to informed consent. The scenes were developed based on emotional recall and written to grant access to the emotional dimensions of my experience in the tradition of evocative autoethnography. As part of my story, I engage with various issues like practices of prescribing, communicative requirements in vulnerable situations to ensure understanding, the dual purpose of informed consent in the moral and legal realm, and the moralized breastfeeding discourse. Possible routes for change to abolish or reduce described barriers to informed consent are discussed.