Healthcare: Right to informed consent stressed

Malik says illiterate patients should be given a take home copy of the informed consent document.

LAHORE:

“Physicians and healthcare providers have a duty to provide proper information to their patients about the risks and benefits of their recommendations,” Dr Ayesha Y Malik from the University of Oxford said on Friday.

Delivering a lecture at the University of Health Sciences (UHS), she said informed consent was a vital part of medical ethics and “entailed more than obtaining a signature or thumb impression on a form.”

She said informed consent, in writing or verbally, must be based on a clear understanding of the patient about what the treatment, procedure or intervention involved.

Malik said technical and medical terminology should be avoided or explained in layman terms in the consent form. “Partially literate patients must have information presented in a language they understand,” she said.

Malik said illiterate patients should be given a take home copy of the informed consent document.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 11^th, 2014.