Consent and provision of information

It is 17:30 on the gynaecology ward. Mrs Patil, a 42-year-old booked for laparoscopic hysterectomy tomorrow morning, has just handed back her consent form with a question you have not heard before: "Doctor, if you find something unexpected inside, what happens to my decision?" She is not testing you — she is doing exactly what the reasonable patient standard asks a person to do. Your answer determines whether tomorrow is consent or coercion. This topic is the language for that conversation, and the legal scaffolding that makes it work.^[1][3]

Overview and definition

Informed consent is the legal and ethical foundation of every clinical encounter. In Australia and New Zealand it is governed by common law, by statutes, by guidelines from the Medical Board of Australia and the Medical Council of New Zealand, and by specialty statements from RANZCOG (C-Gen 2 Consent and provision of information, C-Gen 5 Care of women with decision-making capacity concerns, C-Gen 22 Statement on mature minor consent).^{[3][5][13][14]}

The legal definition is a negative: a procedure performed without consent is the tort of battery. The clinical definition is a process: a conversation that gives the patient the information they need to make a decision that reflects their own values and goals. The two definitions are not the same — the legal one is the floor, the clinical one is the practice.^[1][2][3]