Patient Health Tutorials:
Available resources to aid in the informed consent process 

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Informed consent is an important communication process between physicians and patients that can help support and bolster the physician-patient relationship.  It is not merely signatures on a consent form.  Properly performed and documented, the informed consent process helps to align the patient’s and the physician’s expectations of treatment outcomes. 

Failure to provide patients with sufficient information so that they can make an informed decision about their care places a physician at risk for a legal claim for injury from a complication or unanticipated outcome– even if it was not the result of negligence.

The use of interactive tutorials and other handouts can help to reinforce the information you provide to patients concerning the nature of their condition or illness, the risks and benefits of, and alternatives to, proposed treatment and can enhance your ability to manage patient expectations during the informed consent process.

Such resources, offered for a wide array of diseases and conditions, tests and diagnostic procedures, as well as surgery and treatment options, are available for your patients through Medline Plus, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. Printed summaries are available at the end of each tutorial. 

Simply go to http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/healthtopics.html to learn more about these resources or to view some of the available tutorials.