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Of course health care professionals are required to obtain informed
consent to treatment from patients. However, this only applies if patients
are competent to give consent. If patients are not competent, for example
due to dementia, then in English law doctors are obliged to treat patients
in their best interests. English law makes no provision for relatives (or
anyone else) to give proxy consent for non-competent patients. There are
strong arguments in favour of influenza vaccination being in the best
interests of elderly people. In this paper there is no mention of whether
patients were competent to give consent, or how this might have been
assessed.
Competing interests:
No competing interests
18 February 2002
Diane Reeves
hon clinical sen lect
B15 2TT
dept of gen pract,division of primary care, public and occupational health, university of birmingham
patient competence was not assessed
Of course health care professionals are required to obtain informed
consent to treatment from patients. However, this only applies if patients
are competent to give consent. If patients are not competent, for example
due to dementia, then in English law doctors are obliged to treat patients
in their best interests. English law makes no provision for relatives (or
anyone else) to give proxy consent for non-competent patients. There are
strong arguments in favour of influenza vaccination being in the best
interests of elderly people. In this paper there is no mention of whether
patients were competent to give consent, or how this might have been
assessed.
Competing interests: No competing interests