Consent to Treatment in the Healthcare Profession: An Analysis

The process of consent should apply not only to surgical procedures but all clinical procedures and examinations which involve any form of touching. This must not mean more forms: it means more communication. As part of the process of obtaining consent, except when they have indicated otherwise, patients should be given sufficient information about what is to take place, the risks, uncertainties, and possible negative consequences of the proposed treatment, about any alternatives and about the likely outcome, to enable them to make a choice about how to proceed.”5

HIPAA was designed to minimize disruptions in patient care and there are no regulations on exchanging information to fulfill treatment. Providers can also continue to exchange patient information related to referrals and consultations. It also requires providers to inform their patients of their rights through a notice of privacy practices statement.

Informed consent is the basis for all legal and moral aspects of a patient’s autonomy. Implied consent is when you and your physician interact in which the consent is assumed, such as in a physical exam by your doctor. Written consent is a more extensive form in which it mostly applies when there is testing or experiments involved over a period of time. The long process is making sure the patient properly understands the risk and benefits that could possible happen during and after the treatment. As a physician, he must respect the patient’s autonomy. For a patient to be an autonomous agent, he must have legitimate moral values. The patient has all the rights to his medical health and conditions that arise. When considering informed

Consent and authorization are treated differently when it comes to the privacy rule. Consent gives doctors who directly care for the patient permission to use and disclose protected health information (PHI), for the purposes of treating the patient. Authorization on the other hand, is more specific to the procedure or treatment being performed at the time and has an expiration date. An authorization is needed to disclose PHI to employers for employment decisions or to insurance companies to determine eligibility for life insurance. So, giving consent for treatment does not give a health care entity permission to disclose PHI to unauthorized third parties.

Another issue with the implementation of Informed consent arises when the patient waives the right to Informed consent and leaves the right to make the decision on the physician. Though legally correct, this can cause psychological stress for the physician especially when the decision is about a life threatening medical condition. Moreover, this also makes the patient vulnerable to abuse. (Manthous, DeGirolamo, 2003)

If a service user refuses to give consent in a work setting as a healthcare assistant I must document the refusal first and foremost in the careplan and also inform the manager next I would gently explain to the service user that they are full within their rights to refuse consent but I would like to also inform them of the risks,benefits and potential life threatening consequences that may follow their decision as a result. I would fully ensure that they have clearly understood the decision they have made and that they have also understood what I have explained and documented inluding all the reasons of how,when and why the care is provided for them specifically and what the medication is for also. Finally I would kindly ask if the service

The patient has the right to receive information necessary to give informed consent prior to the start of any procedure or treatment.

In general rule, every adult patient should be given consent to medical treatment but it would be unlawful if medical professional touch a patient without consent. Therefore, consent is very important under medical treatment. The consent must be given voluntarily by someone who has the capacity to consent and who understands what the treatment involves which known as informed consent.

Informed Consent allows a doctor to render treatment to a patient. By signing the document states that the patient understands the circumstances and what is required. This paper is to analyze the consent and non-consent, and ethical issues that can become a problem.

The Human Rights Act 1998 upholds the person/patient rights to make decisions on whether to accept or decline treatment ("UKCEN: Ethical Issues - Consent", 2016).

Respecting the patients’ privacy has always been an important aspect of the physicians practice. This is because health related matters are often private and no patient would want their private information accessible to anyone other than those directly involved in their case. The goals of HIPAA are to increase patient health information use and disclosure control, increase patient access to their records, limit health information use, secure transactions and storage, and establish legal accountabilities and penalties (Kumar et al., 2009, p. 186). In the post HIPAA environment there are less opportunities for the wrong people to get their hands on patient records. The information obtained at each patient flow checkpoint is broken up so that the information that is specifically needed for each department is available for only that department. For example, billing information gets sent and stored in a financial database (Kumar et al., 2009, p. 189). The billing employees only see the data related to the billing and not medical, treatment, or procedure specifics. Mainly, patients want to know what a physician is doing to protect their privacy (Hartley & Jones, 2014, Chapter 5). There is usually a reason as to why a patient expresses extra concern regarding his privacy. For example: A teenager is experimenting with drugs and calls the office for help, a man tests positive for hepatitis C and feels like he may lose his job,

“The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 made it illegal to gain access to personal medical information for any reasons other than health care delivery, operations, and reimbursements” (Shi & Singh, 2008, p. 166). “HIPAA legislation mandated strict controls on the transfer of personally identifiable health data between two entities, provisions for disclosure of protected information, and criminal penalties for violation” (Clayton 2001). “HIPAA also has privacy requirements that govern disclosure of patient protected health information (PHI) placed in the medical record by physicians, nurses, and other health care providers” (Buck, 2011). Always remember conversations about a patient’s health care or treatment is a violation of HIPAA. “All PHI is included in the privacy requirements for example: the patient’s past, present or future physical or mental health or condition; the provision of health care to the individual, or the past, present, or future payment for the provision of health care to the individual, and that identifies the individual or for which there is a reasonable basis to believe it can be used to identify the individual” (Buck, 2011). Other identifiable health information would be the patient’s name, address, birth date and Social Security Number (Keomouangchanh, 2011). (Word count 197)

Beginning with the Hippocratic tradition and lasting for the next 2,400 years, the physician-patient relationship remained relatively unchanged: a paternalistic framework characterized by the authoritative physician being allowed maximum power by the trusting, obedient patient. Over the last 100 years, in response to both research and clinical practice, the bioethics movement ushered in the autonomy model, and with it, a new way of approaching decision making in medicine. The shift to the autonomy model is governed legally by the concept of informed consent, which emphasizes disclosure to patients of sufficient information to permit them to make

Consent can be quite tricky, a legal minefield for healthcare teams, this is due to the patients who will give or refuse to give private information about themselves who is legally competent but

attending told them that the patient would not feel any discomfort. When it was Janet turn,she knew it was an experience that she wanted to gain, but she also hesitated because she had conflict thoughts about what was happening in that moment such as, is the three extras exams for the patient too many, did the patient consent the multiple exams, what would Janet think if she was the patient, and if the patient benefits from learning what happened in the procedure. After presenting the case the authors explain “ In these situations, the physicians is not only teaching the student about proper technique for physical examination but also modeling what one hopes is an appropriate attitude towards the patients. The attitude presented by Janet