Consent For Treatment Form: Fill & Download for Free

If you are in the USA, didn’t you sign a “consent for treatment” form? Are you saying now that you think you were forced by the ER to accept treatment that you did not want?If you think you have some kind of legal case, nothing is stopping you from contacting an attorney. Your legal and medical concerns cannot be addressed in this forum.It seems odd, however, that you went for treatment, that you accepted a tetanus shot and that you now believe that you were coerced in some way.It is the nurse’s job to observe and make notes and communicate with you. If a physician advised a tetanus shot, you must have needed one. Not receiving a tetanus shot when needed can lead to a painful death. The ER would have been negligent to not offer you needed care.Are you now concerned about the bill or what?ERs are busy places and the medical staff have more important things to do than force treatment on patients. You went for help. They gave it. I think that should be the end of the story.

Many ER’s have you sign a consent for treatment when you sign in or if you are unconscious there is an implied consent. Generally you are always free to refuse and leave. Letting patients dictate what treatments or tests they accept is fraught with risk in terms of malpractice. If the hospital did the treatment the bill is owed.Here is what happened to me as a surgeon in the 1990’s. A patient presented to the ER. He worked as a general contractor but did some work himself. He had sustained a dirty cut to his thumb that went into the IP (inter-phalangeal) joint.Standard protocol for an open joint, especially one that was “dirty”, was a trip to the OR to to wash out the joint, clean any debris out of the tissue, repair the wound and admit the patient for IV antibiotics for 24 hours followed by oral antibiotics.The patient, Mr. Contractor, said he didn’t have the time. “Couldn’t you just sew it up and give me some pills?” I talked to him at length about the risks of doing just this. He refused to go to the OR or be admitted.There was no form, but I created one for “informed refusal of treatment”. This said that a host of bad things could happen with his desired treatment which would be a much lower risk if the advised treatment was adopted. He signed the form and I cleaned the wound in the ER and repaired it and gave him oral antibiotics. He signed two copies (one for my office and one for the hospital).Of course his thumb did get infected and the joint was in bad shape when he had it opened and cleaned out. Then my only option was to fuse the joint.After 6 weeks of IV antibiotic and clearly healing after his fusion he looked at me angrily and said “Why did my thumb get infected and what did you do wrong?” Suddenly it was my fault.I walked out of the room and had the form copied. I came back in and handed him a copy. I stated “Do you remember signing this? Look at what it says. You chose the course of treatment not me.” He read the form and looked up sheepishly and said “I thought it was bullshit, I guess I was wrong.”Some doctors just refuse to perform some treatment that is less than the best they can do. Others risk lawsuits if they just comply with patient’s wishes. You seem to want perfect vision for the professionals and to pick and what services you wanted. That is not the way it works.Your option was to walk out (unless it was a psychiatric issue and you were a danger).

For any operative type procedure, including the procedures I perform in the Cardiac Cath lab consent for blood transfusion is specifically named and covered by the procedure consent obtained prior to the procedure. For a Jehovah Witness patient who has chosen to refuse even the possibility or consent for a transfusion, that line about blood transfusion has to be scratched out, blotted out from the consent form and initialed by the patient and the operator signing the consent.So all blood transfusions for anyone in the hospital requires consent. In the Emergency Room where there is no relative available to sign a consent for an incapacitated patient needing transfusion, there is an emergency procedure where two physicians sign an emergency consent for a life saving requirement to cover for a moribund patient in an emergency setting.Thus for a Jehovah Witness - as for any patient - consent for transfusion is required. If a Witness does not give consent and a severe complication occurs that could lead to death then another attempt would be made to seek consent, but if the patient refuses then the hospital staff is in a very sticky place where they can be held liable potentially for the complication that led to severe bleeding and caused the death of the patient.I was once consulted by the Defendant’s lawyer, as an outside physician for expert testimony, regarding this exact, very complicated circumstance. To tell the whole story would be breaking my confidentiality agreement, so I can’t. But I certainly learned more from that experience how careful a physician and medical staff must be where issues of personal belief can impact on emergency treatment or any treatment.