Question

Describe at least three steps health care providers can take in order to ensure patients understand their care as well as prepare them to give acceptable consent for the procedure.

Answer 1

Before a medical procedure can be performed, a physician must have consent from thepatient. Receiving the consent of a patient avoids malpractice and prevents a lawsuit against thehealth practitioner. Not only does it avoid malpractice, it also allows patients to be informed thatthey are receiving the proper medical treatment. Steps that should be taken in order for patientsto understand their care includes recognizing patient rights. Recognizing patient rights, alsoknown as autonomy, represents that health practitioners acknowledge how they want to betreated. Another step to ensure patient care is to not influence a patient’s decision in treatment.Having respect for the patient’s wishes deters pressure that determines what practice should bedone on them. A third step that can be performed for patient care is to provide informed consent.With informed consent, the patient has the rights to be informed about their health and medicaldecisions (Heisig, 2015). In order to prepare a patient to give acceptable consent for a procedure,they can ask a number of questions to their physician. Patients are allowed to ask the number ofoptions available for treatment, the outcomes for each option, and how likely will each optionoccur. These steps can ensure the understanding of patient consent and prepare physicians to give quality medical care.