Brendon J. Coventry
Editor

2014

Over the last decade or so we have witnessed a rapid change in the consumer demand for information by patients preparing for a surgical procedure. This is fuelled by multiple factors including the ‘internet revolution’, altered public consumer attitudes, professional patient advocacy, freedom of information laws, insurance issues, risk management, and medicolegal claims made through the legal system throughout the western world, so that the need has arisen for a higher, fairer and clearer standard of ‘informed consent’ . One of the my main difficulties encountered as a young intern, and later as a surgical resident, registrar and consultant surgeon, was obtaining information for use for the pre-operative consenting of patients, and for managing patients on the ward after surgical operations.