“Common perioperative risks include risk of sore throat or postoperative nausea and vomiting. Rare but serious complications include heart attack, stroke, or death. Any questions?”
Anesthesiologists have a critically important role that often occurs minutes before a patient is transported to the OR. An essential part of our preoperative visit is to engage the patient in the informed consent process. Informed consent is an ethical and legal obligation of anesthesiologists in the United States, and The Joint Commission requires documentation of the process. The required elements of informed consent include a discussion of the planned procedures, including the risks and benefits, reasonable alternatives and their risks and benefits, an assessment of the patient's competence, understanding, and agreement, and documentation of the discussion. Because it is impossible to list every possible risk from a sore throat to death, we must decide which risks to disclose. In the U.S., states are split...
