A legal ruling has highlighted the importance of ensuring patients are given sufficient information to make informed decisions about their treatment options.
A surgeon can no longer be deemed to be ‘the sole arbiter of determining what risks are material to the patient’, but are clinicians fully aware of the legal implications when obtaining consent?
Patients have a fundamental legal and ethical right to decide what happens to their bodies. It is therefore essential that patients have given valid consent for all treatments and investigations. The Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) has warned that NHS Trusts risk facing a dramatic increase in the number of litigation pay-outs made if they do not make changes to the processes they use to gain consent from patients before surgery. The warning comes after a landmark judgment given in a Supreme Court case in 2015, Montgomery vs Lanarkshire Health Board, clarified current understanding of patient consent.
The Royal College of Surgeons has published new guidance that aims to help clinicians understand the shift in the law and its implications, as well as give them the tools to assist in improving their practice.
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