Every medical treatment has risks and benefits. Physicians weigh the risks and benefits before recommending a specific treatment to a patient, but they also have a duty to ensure that patients understand how a treatment could help or harm them. This process of educating a patient about a particular treatment so they can decide whether or not to move forward with it is known as patient informed consent.
Read on to learn why informed consent is crucial for both patients and their physicians.
Informed consent is important for patients because it protects their autonomy and empowers them to make decisions about their own health. It ensures patients understand what to expect with their medical treatment, even if they do not have any medical training.
For physicians, informed consent is essential for building trust and fostering a strong doctor-patient relationship. It also helps defend physicians from medical malpractice claims for failing to get a patient’s informed consent prior to treatment. According to one study, more than 25% of all medical malpractice claims involve allegations about the lack of informed consent.
Despite its importance, informed consent is challenging in some situations. For example, patients may not understand medical terms and concepts. Breaking down medical terms and concepts into layman's terms such that they can be easily understood by a patient is an important element of ensuring informed consent.
Read our blog if you're asking yourself what the difference between "patient informed consent" and "consent to settle" is.
Informed consent to medical treatment is one of the cornerstones of medical ethics. The key ethical considerations include:
Patient informed consent supports some of the core ethical practices in medicine, including:
Informed consent is required for a wide range of medical procedures. It’s needed for most surgeries, even those done in office-based settings. It’s also required for complex medical tests, like endoscopies, and higher-risk medical treatments, such as corticosteroids. Blood HIV testing may require consent, depending on state laws.
While patients generally have the right to informed consent to medical treatment, there are two main exceptions to the rule:
Physicians have both a legal and ethical obligation to get informed consent from their patients before providing treatments. Patients have the right to get information about recommended interventions and make their own decision about whether they want to proceed.
There are three legal standards for informed consent. Physicians are responsible for determining the right approach in each situation:
To obtain informed consent, physicians talk to their patient about the treatment and confirm the patient wants to proceed. Here’s a closer look at the process.
The treating healthcare provider is responsible for getting informed consent from their patient. There are three types of informed consent in healthcare, and the type a provider needs to get varies based on the situation.
Four elements must be present for a patient to provide meaningful informed consent to medical treatment:
To ensure patients can make an informed decision about a proposed medical treatment, physicians have an obligation to discuss the following five components:
To communicate effectively with patients, physicians should use clear, non-medical language. Patient education materials, such as videos or pamphlets, can be helpful. To confirm understanding, physicians can ask patients to repeat the information in their own words.
For patients who are not native English speakers, physicians should enlist the help of a professional translator for the informed consent discussion.
Informed consent for medical treatment is crucial, but it can be challenging for doctors to manage in some situations. Potential issues include:
Physicians have a responsibility to obtain informed consent before providing medical treatment, with few exceptions. Getting informed consent protects patients’ autonomy, builds trust with patients, and helps physicians reduce the risk of malpractice claims.
Ultimately, whether informed consent is challenged in any scenario will depend on whether the physician can demonstrate reasonable due diligence. The more the physician can demonstrate the reasonableness of their efforts, ideally with proper documentation, the more likely any challenge to informed consent will be overcome.
Medical malpractice insurance from Indigo helps protect physicians in the event a patient files a lawsuit for issues related to informed consent.
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