Informed Consent

Nursing Implications Regarding Health Literacy and Informed Consent Roughly 90 million Americans have low health literacy. However, the responsibility of improving health literacy does not fall solely on the patient but also on health care organizations, including healthcare professionals (Mahadevan, 2013). More specifically, nurses have a responsibility to assess a patient's literacy level in order to provide appropriate patient care, education and counseling. Furthermore, nurses have ethical and legal responsibilities as advocates, to ensure patients understand treatment plans and are able to give informed consent for treatment.
Informed consent is a collaborative effort between a physician, nurse and patient. "To meet the definition of informed consent, the patient needs to willingly accept medical intervention after adequate disclosure of the risks, benefits and alternatives to a proposed treatment or surgery" (Menendez, 2013, p. 140). It is the responsibility of the physician to inform patients of the
A patient who is unable to read or write can give verbal consent. In addition, a patient with low health literacy should be given a consent form written in plain language and at a fifth grade reading level or below. Nurses have the ability to improve their verbal communication in an effort to promote health literacy. Some strategies to use include using simple words and terms for easy comprehension, providing a safe environment which promotes trust and keeping the patient engaged (Mahadevan, 2013). Providing supplemental written material and using videos, pictures, and diagrams are other educational tools to help reinforce understanding. Using different teaching modalities often leads to better comprehension and helps reiterate information in a new and different