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MEDICAL MALPRACTICE
patient's condition make it more likely that he will encounter a specific complication or operative risk, you can even tailor the consent
form to the particular case.
Incidentally, explicit consent forms do not deter patients from seeking necessary care.
There's simply no
reason for practiEven if a form isn't perfect, you can
tioners to accept
argue that the patient who accepted
the burden of
uncertainty inhera risk of paralysis or death would
ent in a patient's
certainly have accepted the risk of
situation, so why
an unsightly scar on her abdomen.
not make that
clear in the consent form? If the
form indicates that the patient has been given the opportunity to discuss the procedure and all questions were answered before he signed,
the chances of a claim are markedly reduced. Plus, if one does get
filed, the chance the provider will prevail is correspondingly greater.
Some providers experienced in outpatient elective surgery have prepared consent forms that document the patient's state of knowledge
fairly extensively — some forms, in fact, consist of 8 or 10 initialed
and signed pages.
Doubling down
While a surgical center or other facility might require that its own
generic consent form be signed, there's no reason a practitioner or
facility can't have the patient also sign a more detailed consent form
that's tailored to the specific procedure.
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O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | N O V E M B E R 2013
