ABSTRACT
In the United Kingdom, all operations performed within any surgical speciality under general anaesthesia require consent from patients with capacity, or are performed only in the best interests of those without capacity, in terms set out within the General Medical Council's guidance from 2008. To this group of procedures that require consent should be added any other interventions performed on the patient while conscious that would not, in normal circumstances, be performed by a person without a clinical qualification or training. In this way, the patient's consent legitimises an act that they entrust to a practitioner because the practitioner is a clinician. A patient's oral consent for routine venepuncture will rightly go unrecorded. But faced with a coagulopathic patient who would only marginally benefit from a chest drain, the balancing act between risk and benefit could lead to stark choices.
