Patient Informed Consent

By Jonas Wilson, Ing. Med.

Patient Informed Consent and Anesthesiology

Informed consent may be defined as the process whereby a patient has the right to reject or accept therapy after being provided with information about the benefits and risks of that therapy. In more direct terms, informed consent is formulated on the legal and moral grounds of patient autonomy. In most, if not all, countries, all adult and mentally-competent patients have the right to make autonomous decisions concerning their medical and health conditions. This right is reserved so long as the patient has the ability or capacity to voluntarily make and comprehend the decision in the presence of full disclosure with regards to the therapy in question.

Failure of a healthcare

This suggestion may be quite useful in busy clinics. However, opponents to this suggestion claim that patients seldom take the time to read preprinted text. Moreover, it is crucial that the informed consent for the anesthesia is done by the anesthesiologist and not the surgeon, because anesthesia is not within the scope of the surgeon’s medical and legal domain.

Some anesthesia associations recommend separate forms of informed consent for anesthesia and the actual surgical procedure. This recommendation is made on the observation that combining these two distinct branches of medical procedures (i.e. anesthesia and surgery) on one consent form, significantly deemphasizes the role of anesthesia. This deemphasizing increase the potential for lawsuits. While a patient may have the capacity to give informed consent for the surgery, he or she may not have been able to do so for the anesthesia, especially if an anesthesiologist was not present.

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