Written evidence submitted by the Patients
Association
The Patients Association has campaigned on behalf
of patients for nearly 50 years. We campaign for every patient
to be as informed about their healthcare and health services in
order to maximise the efficiency and effectiveness.
A patient's consent to treatment is the cornerstone
of care. To treat without consent is a criminal offence. We believe
that patients are only able to give truly informed consent if
they have full information about the clinicians and setting in
which healthcare is given. We endorse the succinct statement "no
decision about me without me".
Presumed consent is no consent.
Failure to gain consent has the most fundamental
implications for the basis on which care is given and for the
trust that must exist between individual patients and individual
clinicians.
The Patients Association is acutely aware of the
shortage of organs available for transplant under current NHS
procedures and supports ways of increasing awareness and information
about the importance of organ donation. We believe there is still
some way to go to ensure that patients are fully aware of the
importance of donation. We have not yet fully exploited the possibilities.
There are also alternative techniques to prolong the time an organ
can be available to a recipient.
It is dangerous to presume a patient's wishes at
a time when difficult decisions need to be made immediately. It
is not always possible to contact next-of-kin in time, so we must
not take for granted that presumed consent for all is the answer.
Any failure in the current take up of donor options
is no reason to do away with a patient's fundamental right to
decide what happens to their own body. What is being argued is
that because there is insufficient take up, for whatever reasons,
the basis on which all patient care proceeds should be put at
risk.
The Patients Association believes that, with increased
awareness, those who choose to make this "gift" will
also choose to make it known. It must be made as easy as possible
for each individual to decide. We believe that it is a more constructive
way to proceed which will benefit the relationship of each patient,
regardless of their level of empowerment, with their clinician.
Transplant surgery is one aspect, and an important
one, of the whole of healthcare and the services available to
patients. We do not believe it has been argued successfully that
its needs should override and risk damaging the relationship of
patient and doctor in other branches of medicine.
We repeat—presumed consent is no consent.
February 2011
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