If we use the presumed consent argument to establish the duty of the HCW to provide care, we are confronted with problems ranging over the difficulty of choosing a profession autonomously, the constant level of uncertainty present in the medical profession, the near-impossibility of being able to evaluate retrospectively whether every individual was informed, and the seemingly inescapable problem that this practice would legitimize, and perhaps even foster, discrimination against patients with certain diseases. Our findings suggest that another problem can be added to the list: one-fifth of the participants in this study either lacked adequate knowledge of the occupational risks when they chose the medical profession or were not sufficiently informed of these risks during their faculty education and training. As we stated above, in order for a candidate HCW to be informed literally, three items should be explained to them: (a) the risk posed by each of the contagious diseases known at that given time, (b) commonly agreed criteria and definitions of situations that would surpass the SLR, and (c) the fact that there will always be a degree of uncertainty involved with working in the medical profession, as new risks may emerge at any point during one's professional life. In this study it has been shown that at least some HCWs may not be informed of (a). Also, it is not currently possible to inform HCWs of (b) since there are no widely-agreed criteria and definitions to allow for a universally accepted SLR; and there is currently no standard education for all HCWs to ensure that (c) is satisfied. Considering this in addition to the problems mentioned above, the third premise of the presumed consent argument appears implausible and, consequently, the duty to treat cannot be grounded persuasively on the consent assumption. It is therefore more useful to emphasize justifications other than presumed consent when defining the duty of HCWs to provide care, such as the social contract between society and the medical profession and the fact that HCWs have a greater ability to provide medical aid.