Elements Of Consent In Nursing

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Elements of Consent

According to The Medical Protection Society (MPS 2015), consent it is needed for any treatment/intervention or care and this cannot be imposed by the healthcare team as ought be the expression of a patient 's wish and decision otherwise this is unethical and equally illegal. There are required elements in the process of informed consent. These include: Competence, disclosure, understanding, confidentiality, voluntariness and communication.

A patient it is presumed to be competent to make an informed decision until proven otherwise. However Mental Capacity Act (2005) provide a specific test for competence which outcome 's is an analyse over the patient capacity to understand, retain and weight the information given to …show more content…

Obtaining Consent

Obtaining informed consent is a legal and ethical requirement in nursing. The importance in obtaining informed consent prior treatment reflects good practice concerning Humans Rights Act (1998) to express own decisions as they have the right to do what they decide is best for them. When consent is capture such as authorisation or via electronic systems the transparency is highlighted and this may limit the negative stigma on the healthcare providers equally to increase and maintain public trust in the nursing profession (Smee 2008).

Ethical Aspects

Ethics is the science that study human behaviour, including the action that they do as a consequence behind the rationale for their decisions in terms of morality (Thomson 2008 cited in Buka P 2015). Human actions often have irreversible consequences, therefore nurses should always follow the four ethical principles identified by Beauchamp & Childress (2013) namely Autonomy, Beneficence, Non-maleficence and …show more content…

An example to illustrate this would be the case of Mr DB 25 year old that had a car accident with serious injury that required blood transfusion. He refused the treatment as he was a Jehovah Witness and he was conscious even after the accident. His decision was accepted in respect for his autonomy, however if he was unconscious the healthcare team would normally carry out the blood transfusion as this is classified as an emergency and they would act in his best

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