Informed Consent Essay

Informed Consent Essay

 

How would you inform your client of their rights and responsibilities?

Counseling is a collaborative practice where the counselor and the client establish a meaningful relationship and engage in interpersonal communication to address problems positively and achieve optimal outcomes. Clients have rights and responsibilities that are central to the success of counseling. According to Blease et al. (2020), clients have the right to accurate, honest, and truthful psychological practices, including access to accurate and timely information. Also, counselors should respect the freedom to self-determination, voluntariness, and autonomy. Clients are responsible for complying with payment terms, ensuring punctuality, and partnering with counselors to ensure data security and confidentiality. Since many clients are unaware of their rights and responsibilities, I would inform them by obtaining adequate informed consent explaining the range, nature, and effectiveness of treatment options, potential side effects, payment terms, data privacy, confidentiality policy, and clients’ roles.

What are some of the themes of the ethical codes with respect to the rights of clients?

Different ethical codes protect clients’ rights and entitlements throughout therapeutic processes. Examples of these profound themes are autonomy (respect for a client’s self-determination), beneficence and non-maleficence (determination to benefit the client by preventing harm), fidelity, and veracity (truthfulness) (Smith, 2021). Similarly, professional counselors are ethically-guided to uphold justice by becoming committed to fairness and egalitarian treatment for clients regardless of underlying health conditions, age, and status. Failure to adhere to these ethical codes results in detrimental consequences, including licensure revocation, ineffective counselor-client relationship, and termination of therapy.

From an ethical perspective, why is informed consent of paramount importance?

Obtaining informed consent is central to clients’ satisfaction and achieving the desired outcomes. Firstly, informed consent entails all relevant information regarding the imminent therapy, including its duration, costs, potential benefits, risks, and ideal alternative treatments. Therefore, it aligns with the need to disclose information on the therapeutic processes (Trachsel & Holtforth, 2019). Secondly, it strengthens clients’ autonomy to make informed decisions and communicate their concerns and choices. Thirdly, informed consent emphasizes the client’s ability to understand information and appreciate the disorder or the consequences of the underlying conditions. Therefore, it is crucial for improving therapeutic interventions and achieving the desired outcomes.

From a legal perspective, what are the three elements of adequate informed consent? Define these terms: capacity, comprehension of information, and voluntariness.

Legally, informed consent should cover various elements, including disclosure of information, the client’s competency to make decisions, and the voluntary nature of the decision (Shah et al., 2022). These elements narrow down to capacity, comprehension of information, and voluntariness. In this case, capacity is the client’s ability to make decisions without pressure from surrogates or counselors. Secondly, comprehension of information is the client’s understanding of therapeutic processes, including their duration, benefits, potential barriers, and costs. Finally, voluntariness is the client’s entitlement to agree to consent free from any pressure or coercion. Also, it may entail the client’s choices or actions free from undue influence from other people, including counselors and family members.

 

References

Blease, C. R., Arnott, T., Kelley, J. M., Proctor, G., Kube, T., Gaab, J., & Locher, C. (2020). Attitudes about informed consent: An exploratory qualitative analysis of UK psychotherapy trainees. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11(183). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00183

Shah, P., Thornton, I., Turrin, D., & Hipskind, J. E. (2022). Informed consent. StatPearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK430827/#

Smith, W. (2021). Counseling ethics code: 10 common ethical issues & studies. https://positivepsychology.com/counseling-ethics-code/#considerations

Trachsel, M., & Holtforth, M. (2019). How to strengthen patients’ meaning response by an ethical, informed consent in psychotherapy. Frontiers in Psychology, 10(1747). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01747

 

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Start by reading and following these instructions:

Quickly skim the questions or assignment below and the assignment rubric to help you focus.

Read the required chapter(s) of the textbook and any additional recommended resources. Some answers may require you to do additional research on the Internet or in other reference sources. Choose your sources carefully.

Consider the discussion and the any insights you gained from it.

Create your Assignment submission and be sure to cite your sources, use APA style as required, check your spelling.

Assignment:

 

Authentic Assessment: Informed Consent

This week you will create an informed consent form that could be used with clients to notify them of their rights and responsibilities.

Create a sample informed consent document that could be utilized in a therapeutic environment. Begin by doing an Internet search to examine sample documents (the search terms “informed consent for counseling” brings up a variety of options); you may utilize any of the samples you find as the basis for crafting your own document. In most cases, you will discover that you will find relevant components from a variety of different samples that you will want to piece together to fit your needs.

As you create your informed consent, keep the following questions in mind:

How would you inform your clients to their rights and responsibilities?

What are some of the themes of the ethics codes with respect to the rights of clients?

From an ethical perspective, why is informed consent of paramount importance?

From a legal perspective, what are the three elements involved in adequate informed consent? Define these terms: capacity, comprehension of information, and voluntariness.

You do NOT need to answer these questions specifically, rather you should keep them in mind as key issues as you create your informed consent.

Assignment Expectations:

Length: no more than one single-spaced page

In a separate two-page, double-spaced, APA style paper answer the four questions above and explain how you incorporated them into your Informed Consent Document.

References: no references required

Format: save your assignment as a Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx), Open Office (.odt) or rich text format (.rtf) file type

Submission: submit your assignment to the Drop Box