“Informed consent” is a fundamental principle of good, ethical, medical practice. In the UK, the General Medical Council has specific guidance about informed consent in its guide to shared decision making, which begins –
This guidance explains that the exchange of information between doctor and patient is essential to good decision making. Serious harm can result if patients are not listened to, or if they are not given the information they need – and time and support to understand it – so they can make informed decisions about their care.
They specify what information should be shared –
You must give patients the information they want or need to make a decision.
This will usually include:
- diagnosis and prognosis
- uncertainties about the diagnosis or prognosis, including options for further investigation*
- options for treating or managing the condition, including the option to take no action
- the nature of each option, what would be involved, and the desired outcome
- the potential benefits, risks of harm, uncertainties about and likelihood of success for each option, including the option to take no action.
By ‘harm’ we mean any potential negative outcome, including a side effect or complication.*
When did you last receive a treatment from a doctor? Before you received it, did they gain your “informed consent”?
In my personal experience, informed consent before surgery has always been present, but over the years the information given has improved considerably. When I saw a urologist last year he offered me different options for treatment, discussed the potential benefits and harms, and included a discussion about the option of doing nothing. He then gave me a pack of literature to read and insisted I didn’t decide which treatment to take until I’d read the information and reflected on it before my next appointment with him.
That’s not my experience when it comes to drugs. I have never been given options, nor had the potential benefits and harms discussed, before receiving a prescription, and, in fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of any patient who hasn’t shared exactly that same experience. It’s far more likely that a doctor will write a prescription, and say, take this and come back and see me in x days/weeks. Once the patient picks up the drug from the Pharmacy, inside the pack is an information sheet, which is usually a longer piece of paper than you’d find anywhere else, but where there is a lot of information about what the drug is, the precautions you should take, potential side effects and harms, and exactly how to take it. I’ve never seen any “other options” described on such an information sheet (unlike the information pack I was given before surgery).
I just don’t think this is good enough.
It’s not good practice, as defined by the GMC, and it doesn’t fit with the “Evidence Based Medicine” approach, and it certainly doesn’t meet with the constantly repeated claim to provide “person centred” or “patient centred” Medicine.
If you are a prescriber, maybe you will say, but this just isn’t feasible. There isn’t sufficient time available in each consultation to obtain “informed consent”. I think there are ways to address that. Firstly, there should be enough time, and if there isn’t, then the system is not working. Consultations which are routinely too brief to make a good diagnosis and obtain informed consent are inadequate, and fail to meet the standards of good practice. Secondly, if surgeons can produce comprehensive information about their procedures and the potential benefits and harms, then so can physicians and generalists. Thirdly, as the GMC points out, informed consent is a dialogue and not a single event. Continuity of care has a wealth of benefits, and one of them is enabling an ongoing dialogue between doctor and patient. Many clinics are not designed to facilitate continuity of care, but they could be if we all agreed it was important.
I just don’t think it’s good enough in this day and age to have a doctor write a prescription and say “take this”, without giving any information about potential benefits, harms or other treatment options. And without facilitating a discussion/dialogue with the patient to obtain truly “informed consent”.