Which of the following is NOT an element of informed consent?

• A. Competency
• B. Disclosure
• C. Voluntariness
• D. Documentation of consent by clinician

Answer: (D)

The key idea here is what truly makes consent informed. Informed consent rests on three core ideas: the patient must have the capacity to decide, the clinician must provide adequate information about the procedure (including risks, benefits, and alternatives), and the patient must make the decision voluntarily without coercion. Documentation by the clinician is important for recording what happened and for legal purposes, but it is not itself a component of the patient’s decision. It doesn’t determine whether the patient was truly informed, only that there is a record of what was agreed. So while documenting consent matters in practice, the elements that define informed consent are capacity, disclosure, and voluntariness.