The Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland (AAGBI) has recently reviewed its consent guidelines. They were first published in 1999 and reviewed in 2006, but increasingly patient-centred care and new case law have since provided the catalyst for the new Consent for anaesthesia 2017.

The guidance contains 12 key recommendations, and, while written for anaesthetists, is relevant to all specialties. The document rehearses the fundamental principles of informed consent, providing both helpful references to relevant statute and recent case law, along with practical advice. The new publication refers to, and is consistent with, GMC and Department of Health Guidelines on consent.

The guidelines review the fundamental requirements for valid consent, revisiting issues of capacity and voluntariness and highlighting increased emphasis on information provision. As well as offering context to generic consent advice, the AAGBI Consent guidelines address specific circumstances including children, young people (16 and 17 year olds), advance directives and DNAR decisions.

Key recommendations

The 12 key recommendations of the new guidance are summarised below.

1. Information about anaesthetic alternatives, risks and benefits should be provided as early as possible, supported by written information. The anaesthetist is responsible for making sure that the information provided is properly understood.
2. Do not provide new information immediately before induction (other than in exceptional circumstances).
3. Consider what information is required by each particular patient (see below).
4. Offer the opportunity to ask questions. Respond fully and record your discussions.
5. Note the risks, benefits and alternatives (including no treatment).
6. A separate consent form is not required for anaesthetic procedures undertaken to facilitate another treatment.
7. Consent is an ongoing process and may require repeated discussion.
8. Consent should be sought and documented before each individual component of a treatment course.
9. Patients should understand the implications of refusing information about anaesthesia and their position should be recorded and reviewed.
10. Any grounds for doubting the presumption of capacity in adults must be documented (Mental Capacity Act 2005). Where capacity is reversible, or temporary, consent should be sought when the patient has capacity, if possible.
11. Understand specific legislation and guidance relating to consent for children and young people (16 and 17 year olds).
12. Minimise risks associated with opportunities presented by a clinical encounter for training in practical procedures. Specific consent for a trainee to undertake a clinical therapeutic procedure may not be required.

Montgomery and beyond

The most striking recent change in the legal standard for consent is the requirement for doctors to provide the information that the particular patient would wish to know (point 3 above). This standard is considerably more involved than the historic requirements of Bolam, where clinicians only had to demonstrate that a responsible body of medical opinion would have advised in the same manner.

Since the Supreme Court ruling on Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board the bar is set much higher, and the ruling in another recent case (Thefaut vs Johnston, 2017) went on to expand on this perspective. Particularly of note was that the particular patient test is a mixture of subjective and objective and that the former requires consideration of the effect that the risk's occurrence would have on the life of the specific patient, as well as emphasising the importance of including non-treatment in discussions of the options.

Applying the guidance

The challenge for clinicians is in establishing what information a particular patient needs, within a limited time and with limited previous knowledge of the patient. These difficulties are exacerbated for anaesthetists, who commonly meet their patient for the first time half an hour prior to surgery, have five minutes to seek consent and whose specialty is technical and perhaps of limited interest to patients.

Ensuring that an information leaflet about risks of anaesthesia is distributed to all patients when they attend the preoperative (usually nurse-led) assessment a week or so before major surgery, so they have time to consider the information before meeting the anaesthetist on the morning of surgery, might help address this difficulty.

Clinicians are already employing strategies to establish what information is required by particular patients. It may be possible to develop more formal algorithms where the provision of information is led by patients' responses to a number of simple questions, as outlined below.

• Do you require a detailed explanation of the anaesthetic process, or a brief outline?
• Would like to know the most likely sequence of events, or rare eventualities?
• Are you concerned about a particular aspect of the anaesthetic process?
• Do you have a job, or role, dream, or purpose that you feel it is important to identify?

Identifying recurrent patterns relating to complaints and claims about consent and focusing on those areas could help to minimise adverse outcomes. On reviewing several hundred MDU files, where anaesthetics was the specialty and consent the main issue, a number of themes emerged.

Conclusion

Clinicians have long been involved in difficult deliberations regarding information provision and consent, as required by professional standards. The AAGBI guidelines reflect the increasingly patient-centred perspective taken by the courts and highlight the legal requirement for the information provided to be tailored to the particular patient.

Establishing the information requirements of individual patients turns on multiple complex factors, including personal characteristics and perspectives on health as well as attitudes to risk. It seems unlikely that attempting to categorise individuals into groups and disseminate information accordingly will be helpful.

Instead, consent should be a collaborative process; a partnership, as advocated by the GMC, where individuals contribute towards the concept of themselves as the particular patient.

For more MDU resources on consent and related issues, see our website or use the tags below.

With thanks to MDU council member Prof. Alan Aitkenhead (BSc MD FRCA) for his assistance with this article.