In private practice, informed consent is interpreted as providing explanations rather than offering choices: A qualitative study

Abstract

Question: How do physiotherapists working in private practice understand and interpret the meaning and significance of informed consent in everyday clinical practice? Design: Qualitative study using semi-structured interviews. Participants: Seventeen physiotherapists purposefully recruited from metropolitan private practices where treatment was on a one-on-one basis. Results: Therapists defined informed consent as an implicit component of their routine clinical explanations, rather than a process of providing explicit patient choices. Therapists' primary concern was to provide information that led to a (therapist-determined) beneficial therapeutic outcome, rather than to enhance autonomous p..