Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP
Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare
Here’s a resource that’s always relevant to all health care settings:Implementation Guide for AHRQ’s Making Informed Consent an Informed Choice – Training Modules. This 57-page guide is rich with information to help you and your team promote/improve informed consent.
This guide is a companion to the AHRQ training modules: Making Informed Consent an Informed Choice: Training for Health Care Leaders (Leaders Module) and Making Informed Consent an Informed Choice: Training for Health Care Professionals (HCP Module). It provides guidance for implementing the training modules using a quality improvement (QI) approach. This guide offers ideas and suggestions for overcoming challenges in getting staff to take the modules and for putting the recommended improvement strategies into practice smoothly. The guidance is based on the implementation experiences of four hospitals that participated in a pilot test of these training modules, and on the experiences of other hospitals implementing quality improvements. Start by viewing the training modules. Viewing these modules will mark the beginning of your effort to improve informed consent.
The Leaders Module addresses improvements that can be made on the hospital level. The HCP Module addresses strategies that clinical teams can use to help patients make informed choices. Both modules cover the principles of informed consent, including patients’ rights, legal and patient safety implications, and patients’ capacity for decision making. Each module can be taken for free continuing education credits on The Joint Commission’s learning management system (LMS) for hospitals accredited by The Joint Commission. Hospitals can also host the modules on their own learning management systems . PDFs of module screenshots and audio scripts are available at: https://www.ahrq.gov/professionals/systems/hospital/informedchoice/index.html.
Don’t let the term hospitals in the above paragraphs deter you from using this valuable guide and related tools! There’s a lot of tools that pertain to your facility, staff and residents/patients. Informed consent is the right of every patient and resident. Our role as healthcare professionals is to ensure that right is honored. Take a look at the other reasons why informed consent is important to you and your team:
Here’s a look at the Table of Contents:
I encourage you to download these resources and check them out.
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