Consent

Informed consent and the temptations of hindsight Jasper Gold Tosh v Gupta  [2025] EWHC 2025 (KB) Introduction In Tosh v Gupta, a claimant failed to convince the court that she had not been properly consented in the face of a thorough if not forensically documented consent process. The case sheds…

Bolam, Bolitho and Informed Consent Dominic Ruck Keene McCulloch and Others v Forth Valley Health Board [2023] UKSC 26 The Supreme Court has given an authoritative re-statement of the application of the ‘Professional Practice Test’ or ‘Bolam’ test in the context of informed consent.  This was a Scottish case, but…

Bell and A v Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust and others [2021] EWCA Civ 1363 In Bell and A v Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust and others [2021] EWCA Civ 1363 the Court of Appeal advised judges to avoid formulating policy in an area of social and moral complexity. Ever…

Malik v St George’s University Hospitals NHSFT [2021] EWHC 1913 (QB) This was a claim about spinal surgery, specifically whether a revision decompression at T10/11 was appropriately advised and whether the Claimant had been adequately advised of reasonable alternative or variant treatments to the surgery which ultimately worsened rather than…

Alan McNab and Others v Greater Glasgow Health Board [2020] CSOH 53 Plant v El-Amir [2020] EWHC 2902 (QB) Updated GMC Guidance on Consent, effective from 9 November 2020 On 9th November 2020, new guidance from the GMC came into force with respect to informed consent. This guidance was produced…

This article originally appeared in Issue 6 (September 2020). Introduction  On 11 March 2015 the UK Supreme Court gave judgment in Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board [2015] UKSC 11. For both medical professionals and lawyers practising in the field of clinical negligence it is a landmark judgment and the first…