Consent and parental responsibility - the past, the present and the future.

Introduction Informed consent is the 'permission or agreement' given by the patient for a proposed action. This paper explores the clinician's role in obtaining informed consent, provides an overview of consent and parental responsibility in the UK, and presents practical adjuncts to aid dental professionals in ascertaining who has parental responsibility to delineate persons capable of providing assent on behalf of an underage patient.Consent and parental responsibility While the principles of consent have largely stayed constant with time, subtleties in parental responsibility legislation exist in different regions of the UK.

Patient, clinician and independent observer perspectives of shared decision making in adult orthodontics.

Objectives: To investigate and compare the extent of shared decision making (SDM) in orthodontics from the perspective of patients, clinicians and independent observers.

Design: A cross-sectional, observational study.

Setting: NHS teaching hospital.

Serving the Customer – Do Patient Feedback and Questionnaires Improve Quality?

This review article aims to analyse whether patient feedback and questionnaires improve quality of care. It is recognized that patients cannot assess the medical competence of the clinician, yet patient experience provides an insight into the process of care through the patients’ eyes. Patient experience measures are more reliable for use to assess quality than patient satisfaction surveys.