The unpermitted, unprivileged touching of the person of another is a legal wrong or, technically, a battery. The defense to a charge of battery is consent. In the nonemergency medical encounter, however, such consent is ineffective as a defense1 without a full understanding of what it is that is being consented to. Hence, a distinction must be drawn between consent and informed consent, recognizing a legal obligation to obtain informed consent in a medical encounter. An enormous volume of litigation has involved yet another aspect of the concept: documentation of informed consent. By failing to distinguish between informed consent and . . .