Hello and welcome to the zero to finals podcast.

My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about consent and capacity,

particularly in relation to consenting to treatment like surgery.

And if you want to follow along with written notes on this topic,

as always, you can follow along at zero to finals.com in the general surgery section or in the general

surgery section of the zero to finals surgery book. So let's get straight into it.

Patients should be able to make informed decisions about their treatment.

And this means that they need to be given information in a way that allows them to adequately

understand the purpose, benefits and risks of treatment to make a decision.

It's important to remember that patients are allowed to make unwise decisions or decisions that others

might disagree with provided they fully understand the decision and they have capacity.

Making an unwise decision does not automatically mean that they lack capacity.

It's worth noting that you do not have to provide treatment requested by a patient if you do not think it's appropriate.

For example, if the patient is requesting opiate medication or unwarranted surgery.

However, they do have a right to a second opinion.

Here's a tom tip for you.

Your ability to help patients make informed decisions is tested with

every OSCE explanation station. The key to scoring the highest marks is to tailor your explanation

to the patient's current understanding, their ideas, their concerns and their expectations.

This means spending most of the time listening and asking questions rather than telling

the patient information.

Check what the patient currently knows and then fill in the gaps using small chunks of

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