Informed Consent to Treatment

The ethical principle of autonomy obliges the nurse to recognize that patients, including the elderly, have a right to make their own health care decisions. In addition to the presence of decision-making capacity, for autonomous decision-making to occur certain conditions have to be met (as described earlier, under decision-making capacity). Additionally, the patient has to be provided with appropriate and adequate information in language they can understand. This process of discovering what information the patient needs in order to make an informed decision is essential to informed consent. Informed consent is generally viewed as a process of interaction between a patient, providers, and possibly concerned others that ends in a decision for, or refusal of, treatment and is based on the patient's understanding of the treatment, its goals, probability of success, congruence with patients own values and goals, and the existence of alternatives (Geller et al., 2001/1997).