"Informed consent is a principle in medical ethics and medical law and media studies, that a patient must have sufficient information and understanding before making decisions about their medical care."
The process of obtaining a client's agreement to participate in a particular treatment or intervention, after explaining the risks and benefits of that intervention.
Definition of Informed Consent: Understanding the basic concept of informed consent, its purpose and importance in social work practice.
Consent Forms: Familiarizing oneself with the standard elements of informed consent forms, their composition, and the best practices used in their use.
Capacity to Provide Informed Consent: Discussing the factors that determine individuals' capacity to provide informed consent, including age, cognitive ability, and other circumstances that impact decision-making capacity.
Culturally Responsive Informed Consent: Understanding how to provide informed consent that is sensitive to differing cultural values, beliefs, and attitudes.
Consent for Minors: Discussing how to get informed consent from those who are under the age of 18, recognizing the limits and constraints on the role of a social worker when providing services to minors.
Within-Session Changes to Consent: Addressing the steps involved in getting informed consent when a client decides to change the service they receive within a single visit.
Challenging Consent: Outlining the procedures to be followed when a client's capacity to provide informed consent is challenged by the worker or someone else involved in the case.
Counseling Confidentiality: Highlighting aspects around privacy, data protection, and confidentiality, with respect to counseling services.
Reporting and Confidentiality: Addressing the ethical standards of confidentiality and privacy when clients need to be reported for suspected abuse, neglect, or exploitation.
Documentation for Consent: Explaining the importance of keeping accurate and clear records of informed consent discussions and agreements, considering legal restrictions, and the proper disposal of such records.
Standard Informed Consent: The standard informed consent describes the standard process of informing clients of their rights, relevant risks, benefits, and alternatives to any recommended intervention.
Implied Consent: Implied consent can be inferred from the client's behavior or lack of objection. It applies when the client is competent, and the intervention is of low risk.
Expressed Consent: Consists of written or verbal communication of the client's consent to an intervention.
Informed Written Consent: Informed written consent involves human services professionals providing written documentation of the risks, benefits, and alternatives to relevant interventions.
Group Consent: The group consent applies to group interventions where all group members are equally informed of the intervention's relevant benefits, risks, and alternatives.
Waiver of Consent: Sometimes, clients can freely waive their right to informed consent because they understand the risks and benefits of not receiving informed consent.
Emergency Consent: This type of consent is necessary when a threatening medical or other emergency exists that demands immediate intervention without sufficient time for explaining the risks and benefits.
Assent: The Assent involves client's acquiescence or agreement to an intervention, either prior to or during the intervention when the client lacks legal capacity to provide Informed Consent.
Substitute Consent: When the client lacks the capacity to make an informed consent decision, substitute consent enables next of kin, appointed guardians, or other legally designated proxies to make those decisions for the client.
Parental Consent: For minors, parents or legal guardians must provide consent for an intervention to proceed, unless it falls under the exceptions available in the law, such as emancipated minors.
"Pertinent information may include risks and benefits of treatments, alternative treatments, the patient's role in treatment, and their right to refuse treatment."
"Healthcare providers have a legal and ethical responsibility to ensure that a patient's consent is informed."
"This principle applies more broadly than healthcare intervention, for example to conduct research and to disclose a person's medical information."
"Within the US, definitions of informed consent vary, and the standard required is generally determined by the state."
"Impairments to reasoning and judgment that may preclude informed consent include intellectual or emotional immaturity, high levels of stress such as post-traumatic stress disorder or a severe intellectual disability, severe mental disorder, intoxication, severe sleep deprivation, dementia, or coma."
"Obtaining informed consent is not always required. If an individual is considered unable to give informed consent, another person is generally authorized to give consent on their behalf."
"Parents or legal guardians of a child can generally give consent on their behalf, though the child may be required to provide informed assent."
"The doctrine of implied consent permits treatment in limited cases, for example when an unconscious person will die without immediate intervention."
"Cases in which an individual is provided insufficient information to form a reasoned decision raise serious ethical issues."
"When these issues occur, or are anticipated to occur, in a clinical trial, they are subject to review by an ethics committee or institutional review board."
"Informed consent is codified in both national and international law."
"'Free consent' is a cognate term in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted in 1966 by the United Nations."
"Article 7 of the covenant prohibits experiments conducted without the 'free consent to medical or scientific experimentation' of the subject."
"As of September 2019, the covenant has 173 parties and six more signatories without ratification."