The word comes from the Greek autos (self) and nomos (governance). In health care, it has come to mean a form of personal liberty, where the individual is free to choose and implement her own decisions, free from deceit, duress, constraint, or coercion. Three basic elements seem to be involved in the process: the ability to decidefor without adequate information, and intellectual competence, autonomy seems hollow; the power to act on your decisionsit is obvious that those in the death camps of World War II could have made all the decisions they might have wished but lacked power to implement them; and finally a respect for the individual autonomy of othersit is the provision of a general respect for personal autonomy for both practitioner and patient alike that ennobles and professionalizes the process. The term self- determination is often used synonymously with autonomy.

True or False?