Doctors will be given guidelines on what they need to tell patients about more common procedures. These are contained in recently released recommendations to ensure that patients are better able to make informed decisions about their own treatment, and in order that doctors are not penalised unfairly for omissions. The recommendations are the result of a work group set up to review informed consent and disciplinary proceedings. Other recommendations by the group deal with the long delays faced by doctors in having complaints against them heard. The group's report, containing 29 recommendations, has been accepted by the Ministry of Health.

This should help to address the angst generated by two high-profile cases in which the doctors were first punished, then exonerated in complaints made against them. Obviously, the medical community was concerned. What was required was a clearer framework of what constitutes informed consent. The new guidelines seek to provide just that. Informed consent is crucial to a good patient-doctor relationship. It is only when patients know and understand the treatment they are receiving that their interests are served. It is essential that doctors provide information that patients need and ask for, and they must not be selective by directing patients towards a particular treatment. While a patient cannot match a doctor's expertise and experience, the recommended course must make sense to him.