What Is Patient Consent? British Comprehensive Definition

The crucial element of a successful treatment is the patient's agreement with a plan of operation, procedure, etc. Sometimes, it may be difficult due to patients' dental fear and anxiety or due to communication issues, but in any case, it's crucial to understand what exactly consent is to determine whether you receive it.

In this review, we'll explore the general understanding of this term in the context of the British dental community, many key principles of which are related to the European concept of "patient consent."

Types of consent

General Dental Council – one of the primary industry regulators in the UK – defines three main principles of "valid consent":

Voluntary: the dentist can coerce patients, use guilt trips, or put any other mental pressure on them to force them to make a decision.
Informed: The clinician should explain to the patients all existing risks and possible procedure alternatives so they can assess the feasibility of the operation.
Given with understanding: if the patient has no clue about what you are explaining (due to education barriers or other causes), it's not consent – it's confusion.

For both treatment parties' safety, it's crucial to provide all these factors to ensure further treatment will not be considered assault.

Key consent criterias

In 2005, UK authorities published the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) – a guide about how clinicians should deal with patients who have concerns regarding their consent – that provides five main principles of proper conversation:

Presumption of capacity – the patient has the capacity to decide until you prove otherwise.
Support to make a decision – the clinician must provide all available information, including image data, diagrams, and special presentation apps, to help the patient choose the correct option.
Ability to make unwise decisions – patients have the option to refuse the treatment due to some other plans, for example, and clinicians should respect this choice and not insist on procedures.
Best interest – if patients are struggling to decide for themselves between a few treatment options, you can try to make a decision and offer the most feasible one.
Least restrictive – if you take responsibility and offer some options, choose the least invasive one and the least heavy-handed. If you just proposed to extract all the teeth and replace them with implants, it's unlikely that the patient will agree with you.

Problematics of the capacity

The first principle regarding having the capacity to decide requires precise attention. How can a clinician determine that the patient can handle the decision-making process? Well, MCA has an answer that requires some communicative skills to "read" the patient's reactions.

First, clinicians need to determine whether patients understand the provided information. If an individual has just heard about the importance of oral hygiene or has discovered that they should visit the dentist from time to time, it indicates a lack of capacity to make a decision regarding treatment.

Then, the clinician should pay attention to whether the patient can remember the received information. If a patient forgets about the procedure risks that the dentist explained just a few minutes ago, it's a bad sign, indicating that the patient either didn't listen to the doctor or is not interested in the treatment. In both cases, it would be challenging to provide high-quality outcomes.

To sum it up, the problem with patients' decision-making starts to occur when, after all possible explanations, patients show no signs of understanding what's going on in the dental cabinet.

Once you learn the main criteria of patient consent, you can move forward and master your communicative strategies with other guides on our Newsfeed:

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