Medical Consent Form with Examples

Shine Colcol

March 4, 2025•12 min read

Fact checked by Dr. Ben Condon

Template

This medical consent form template, also known as a patient consent form template, assists medical practitioners with ensuring they clearly communicate the details of proposed treatment plans to patients before getting their consent to proceed.

With Heidi, you can use AI to automatically generate medical consent forms that cover the following:

Clear and specific details regarding the proposed treatment, including its known risks, and benefits.
Documentation of the patient’s response, including concerns raised during the discussion, and the healthcare provider’s explanations.
Coverage of the consent details, including the date and time along with the doctor’s verification, ensuring consent was obtained in compliance with legal and ethical standards.‍

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A medical consent form is used by medical professionals to acquire permission from patients or their legal guardians, before proceeding with a specific treatment or procedure. They are used by various specialists across the medical field, including surgeons, anesthesiologists or anaesthetists, primary care physicians, and many others.

This form is crucial for ensuring patients are fully informed before undergoing any treatments or procedures proposed by their healthcare provider. The process of consent also involves the discussion of potential alternatives to the proposed treatment, including the option to forgo treatment altogether.

In the medical field, obtaining informed consent is an essential practice that ensures doctors are fulfilling their legal and ethical obligations.

In this article, we’ll discuss the common types of medical consent forms used by healthcare professionals, and we’ll also provide tips and examples on how to create a medical consent form fit for your practice. Additionally, we’ll share ready-made and customizable patient consent forms for your daily practice.

There are different variations of patient consent forms, each tailored to a specific need and doctor’s specialty:

This form is used for routine treatments, diagnostics, and non-invasive procedures. The patient signs after they’ve clearly understood the purpose of their treatment, potential risks involved, and any alternative options as explained by the doctor before proceeding.

Sometimes called a medical consent form for minors, this form allows parents or legal guardians to authorize medical treatment in place of children or minors. This is especially important if the patient is under the care of an adult guardian since it allows them to receive necessary medical treatment even in the absence of their parents.

A subtype is the medical consent form for grandparents, which is a form that specifically grants grandparents permission to make healthcare decisions for their grandchild in the absence of their parents.

This form must be completed before the patient can undergo any surgical procedure. It outlines the specific surgery, including the exact side where relevant (e.g. left total knee replacement), associated risks, potential complications, and expected outcomes as explained by the attending surgeon and affirmed by the patient.

In some emergency situations where the patient is unable to provide immediate consent (e.g., unconscious or incapacitated), this consent form is used by doctors so they can administer urgent care.

Often, this form is pre-signed for minors, people with chronic conditions, or those deemed at high risk for emergencies.

This form is used to confirm the patient’s agreement to take prescribed medications that affect mood, behavior, or mental function, after clearly understanding their associated risks, potential side effects, and expected outcomes.

This type of consent form is especially important in the context of psychiatric care, where the patient’s autonomy is a crucial factor for treatment compliance.

In the context of medical research, this form serves as proof that voluntary subjects understand the purpose, associated risks, and potential benefits of enrolling in a clinical trial. It is an essential component to ensure that a study complies with legal and ethical standards in their employment of human subjects.

Below is a quick guide to creating a sample medical consent form for use in your daily practice.

1. Start with the Proposed Treatment

Open with the most important detail, which is the proposed treatment you’re trying to get consent for. Make sure you provide a short but precise description of the treatment or care plan and its purpose.

Example:

Proposed Treatment: The patient will undergo a colonoscopy to investigate the cause of persistent abdominal pain and irregular bowel movements.

2. Outline Risks, Benefits, and Alternatives

Give a balanced overview of the treatment. This section should include the target benefits, risks, and if applicable, alternatives, along with the option to forgo treatment altogether. This ensures the patient is given adequate information to make an informed choice.

Example:

Risks and Benefits: The benefits include an accurate diagnosis and the potential treatment of detected abnormalities. Risks include bleeding, perforation of the colon, and adverse reactions to anesthesia.

Alternative Options: CT colonography was discussed as a non-invasive alternative, though the risk of missing small polyps was highlighted. The option to forgo the procedure altogether was also explained, along with the potential consequences of not undergoing screening.

This final section records the patient’s response once all of the relevant information regarding the treatment is discussed. This includes the concerns raised, and the final decision for consent. Additionally, this covers the date and time when consent was formally given, as well as the name and signature of the attending physician.

Example:

Patient Response: The patient expressed understanding of the procedure and voiced concern about the risk of perforation. They asked about the recovery time, and it was explained that most patients recover within a day, though mild discomfort may persist for a few days.‍

Consent Documentation: Consent was obtained verbally and documented in the patient’s record.

Date and Time: October 15, 2023, at 10:30 AM

Physician Signature: Dr. Emily Johnson, General Practitioner

Patient consent forms are typically transcribed manually. While it generally gets the job done, it’s not the most efficient and it’s far from error-proof. Through AI advancements in the medical field, however, we’ve created a better way to accomplish medical consent forms.

With our cutting-edge AI medical scribe Heidi, you don’t have to set extra time aside to transcribe your patient’s consent details. With your patient’s permission, simply hit record and let Heidi get to work!

Specialist Surgeon Dr. Charles Kuntz saves an hour a day by delegating his note-taking and organization to Heidi. That’s a lot of time saved from doing paperwork. Here’s how Heidi helps you accomplish medical consent forms in no time:

Transcribe - Ask for your patient’s consent before recording your conversation with Heidi. Once granted, you can tick the box on the pre-recording prompt to start recording. Explain the treatment plan, risks, benefits and alternatives, then ask about their concerns before requesting for verbal consent to proceed with the treatment plan on record.
Customize - Once done, select your preferred medical consent form template and watch as Heidi perfectly transcribes the details of your conversation into the appropriate fields and format!
Transform - After generating your medical consent form, you can ask Heidi to give additional documentation including patient summaries, follow-up instructions, or supporting medical records if needed.

Heidi is compliant with international data privacy and security standards, including HIPAA, ISO 27001, and SOC 2 certifications. We adhere to jurisdiction-specific regulations, ensuring data localization for customers in Australia, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Read more about our compliance here.

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This medical consent form template helps general practitioners document adult patient consent by briefly outlining treatment details, benefits, risks, and alternatives.

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Mental health professionals can use this template to document information from a child’s initial therapy session, and it also includes a field for informed consent to be signed by the patient’s legal guardian.

‍View Template‍

This operation consent form template is designed specifically to be used by orthopedic surgeons. It includes sections for informed consent, the names of the medical practitioners involved, the operation itself, and the postoperative care plan.

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Informed consent is legally required before any treatment or procedure that carries potential risks. Common use cases are surgeries, administration of psychotropic medications, and clinical trials. In emergency situations where the patient isn’t fit to provide consent, doctors may proceed with treatment under implied consent laws.

Yes, patients may revoke their consent at any time even while treatment is underway, considering they are deemed mentally competent to do so. If consent is withdrawn, medical professionals must document the patient’s decision and halt the ongoing procedure or unless they’re dealing with an emergency situation.

Retention periods may vary per state or country, but they are typically kept for 7 to 10 years. If the patient is a minor, then it may potentially be longer. Keeping consent forms on file helps ensure the continuity of documentation.

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