Provision 3

When providing care, nurses consider the circumstances and recognize that some persons seeking or considering receiving care are vulnerable. Nurses work as members of the interprofessional team, within their scope of practice, to support ethical informed consent. All persons who are considering their options for care should be free from undue influence and be assisted in making decisions consistent with their values. The process of consent includes consideration of social and structural determinants of health, the complexities of the healthcare system, and generational and cultural preferences that influence access and consent processes. Consent requires explaining information, providing options, answering questions, and respecting the right to refuse treatment. Persons receiving care, or their alternate decision-makers, must be provided with sufficient and relevant information in their preferred language, at a suitable literacy level that accounts for their cognitive function and developmental level, to enable them to make care decisions. Information needed for informed consent includes the purpose, risks and benefits, available alternatives to the proposed treatment, and expected outcomes.

Nurses build trust through relational consent, partnering with patients to determine agreement or refusal in all care encounters. Nurses set aside bias and are attuned to relational consent in all contexts. Trust is promoted in the nurse-patient relationship through transparency and attention to patient responses to life and health experiences.

As technology increasingly influences healthcare, nurses establish and maintain trust by balancing clinical and ethical judgment with the use of augmented intelligence or artificial intelligence (AI) in nursing practice. Nurses lend their expertise and influence the integration of augmented intelligence and AI in clinical encounters.