Why Is Informed Consent Important?
Informed consent is a person’s decision, given voluntarily, to agree to a healthcare treatment, procedure or other intervention that is made:
- Following the provision of accurate and relevant information about the healthcare intervention and alternative options available; and
- With adequate knowledge and understanding of the benefits and material risks of the proposed intervention relevant to the person who would be having the treatment, procedure or other intervention.
Ensuring informed consent is properly obtained is a legal, ethical and professional requirement on the part of all treating health professionals and supports person-centred care. Good clinical practice involves ensuring that informed consent is validly obtained and appropriately timed.
Informed consent is integral to the right to information in the Australian Charter of Healthcare Rights, and recognised in Professional Codes of Conduct. Additionally, the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards require all hospitals and day procedures services to have informed consent processes that comply with legislation, lawful requirements and best practice.
For there to be valid informed consent, the person consenting must:
- Have the legal capacity to consent
- Give their consent voluntarily
- Give their consent to the specific treatment, procedure or other intervention being discussed
- Have enough information about their condition, treatment options, the benefits and risks relevant to them, and alternative options for them to make an informed decision to consent. This includes the opportunity to ask questions and discuss concerns.
These paragraphs above have been extracted from “Fact Sheet for clinicians – Informed consent in health care” 1.
When you come into our clinic you will be given some forms to complete which will help the chiropractor to understand your circumstances and initiate a diagnosis and subsequently recommend a treatment plan. You will also be asked to complete an “Authorisation For And Consent to Treatment” form which outlines the benefits and risks associated with chiropractic care which will in turn allow you to give informed consent to any treatment offered. In addition, at the time of the consultation, your practitioner will outline a treatment plan and again explain all available options, highlighting all risks and benefits of the proposed treatment. If supplements are recommended in your treatments, your practitioner will also go through all of the risks and benefits with you, along with their recommended dosages.
As you can see, the fundamental principle of informed consent is that you are fully aware of all of the risks and benefits associated with your care plan and thereby you are in control of what is done to your body. We therefore encourage you to ask questions if you are in doubt, or do not understand what is being proposed by your chiropractor. Remember that is OK to say no, if you need more time to do further research, need to review the references that we can provide for your proposed treatment plan, or any other reason. We understand that everybody is different (in fact, unique!) and that perception of risk versus benefit is ultimately a personal decision.
Rest assured that all of our chiropractors pride themselves with treating your health care as their No.1 priority and will respect any request, or decision you make, with regard to what they have offered.
To maximise the benefits and minimise the risk of injury during squatting exercises, keep the following tips in mind:
Haven’t you ever wondered why humans have to endure such debilitating conditions as headache and backache? If you watch a lot of television, you will be bombarded with advertisements for analgesics (such as aspirin, paracetamol, ibuprofen, and the list goes on). They all claim to provide some version of “fast, effective temporary relief of aches and pains, such as headaches, migraine headaches, and back pain”, as well as other body pains. They are commonly called pain-killers.
The best way to imagine how this works is the view “pain” as the engine light on the dash of all motor vehicles. When the engine light comes on, it a top level signal that indicates that something general is wrong with your engine but does not tell you what it is. Treating pain with a pain-killer is analogous to sticking black tape over the engine light in your car. I am sure you have heard many a jokes about people who do this, yet we are led to believe, when watching popular media, that it’s OK to do this when our body gives us the same danger signals.
As humans we are designed to be able to process a large variety of substances through our digestive system. This is one of the factors that has allowed humans to survive, as a species, for so long! However, we cannot escape the fact that some substances are more beneficial to others and some substances, are so bad that, they create a destructive patterns in our bodies.
Fortunately our practitioners in our clinic are able to help sort out some of this puzzle and point you in the right direction. They have a good educational foundation, in relation to foods and body biochemistry and can understand the effect that most food and edible substances have on various parts of the human body. Careful history taking and evaluation of your lifestyle and diet may help to determine whether there are specific adverse reactions to some of the foods that you may currently be eating.
Unlike a car which can be fixed in a single visit to a mechanic, human beings are a complex organic structure. We are made of bones, muscles, ligaments and connective tissue, veins, arteries, lymphatics – just to name a few parts! On top of that, the part trying to make sense of it all is one of the most complex organs we have – the brain – which uses our nervous system to signal events, receive sensory and motor information from our body parts, and hopefully keep it all under control! Research studies also show that there is even a direct neural connection between the brain and the gut1, which makes the relationship between all your organ systems that much more complex.
Solving the puzzle of “what went wrong?” is pretty tricky, as we already know, the brain compensates for every malfunction, including the brain and body compensations themselves. Eventually, your body will end up with an onion of ‘bandaids’ piled one on top of each other.
Yes. Our bodies are programmed to react to our environment in such a way that it ensures our survival. This is commonly referred to as the “fright-flight” response. When our brains perceive changes in the environment as potentially dangerous, it triggers a response that serves to heighten our perceptions and reactions and effectively brings the issue to our immediate attention. Our heart races, our breath quickens and we begin to sweat. We get a rush of hormones and the result is that we get a “stress” response. While we often think of this as something external to our bodies, it can also occur when there is an over reaction to events that are not life-threatening. These can be things such as over work, a family crisis, and even, for some individual, chemical stress that occurs as gut changes that occur after ingesting some foods. A detailed article published in the Harvard Medical School1, gives a good detailed explanation of the background and the body chemistry involved in stress reactions.
The body is designed to manage the stress response for short periods of time. Once the stress inputs are removed, our bodies settle down and eventually return to normal functioning.
It is possible to take some action immediately to help you manage some of the stress inducing factors in your life. They all help to bring your life back into your control.
Prolonged or excessive stress is bad for your health and wellbeing. Dealing with it in a timely manner is the key to recovery. This article has shown you what to look out for and where to get help.
