BMJ 1995;310:936 (8 April)

Letters

Consent forms are unhelpful

EDITOR,--I suspect that the case of an anaesthetist found guilty by the General Medical Council of an assault through lack of consent to his actions will precipitate the full range of emotions among doctors, from concern to outrage.1 The council may, however, have done the profession a favour in the troubled area of consent, which continues to languish in the era since the case of Sidaway v Governors of Bethlem Royal Hospital.2 In that case it was sufficient to show that other doctors (even a minority) would not have informed a patient of certain matters related to his or her treatment to mount a defence to a charge of having negligently failed to obtain consent. In the present case the General Medical Council was clearly not swayed by the evidence that it was the practice in many hospitals not to inform patients of the use of diclofenac suppositories. This may . . . [Full text of this article]


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Relevant Article

A fundamental problem of consent
John Mitchell
BMJ 1995 310: 43-46. [Extract] [Full Text]

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