Patient autonomy is a key concept in medical ethics. It is less about characterising a general capacity and more about a guarantee of situation-specific autonomy of action (Beauchamp/Childress 2009): Individuals undergoing treatment have a right to consent to or refuse medical treatments after they have been properly informed. The concept of patient autonomy is therefore based on the essential criterion of informed consent. Informed consent is given when the decision of the person concerned is made deliberately, with understanding and free from the controlling influence of others. 

This procedural concept of autonomy, which is defined in a content-neutral way via the decision-making process, is now regarded as the standard concept in medical ethics. As the medical ethics concept is always interrelated with more general philosophical concepts of autonomy, proposals to understand patient autonomy differently are repeatedly discussed. For example, proponents of substantive concepts of autonomy recognise the need to define self-determined decisions in terms of content and value-related criteria. Those in favour of relational concepts of autonomy see relationships of mutual recognition as constitutive for autonomous decisions. Since the various conceptions of autonomy are always based on a certain ideal of an autonomous subject, the objection that autonomy is too demanding is often raised. It is therefore argued that the demands on the autonomy of the person to be treated must be kept as low as possible in clinical practice so that they can be fulfilled for as many people to be treated as possible.