The ‘Consent: Patients and Doctors Making Decisions Together’ guidance, which will be issued to doctors in May, including 21,000 doctors in Scotland, will come into effect in June.

The guidance, which updates previous guidelines published in 1998, focuses on good decision making, based on information sharing between doctors and patients, and provides a framework for good practice in the situations that doctors most commonly face. It covers areas such as how to explain risk and possible side-effects of treatment to patients and stresses that getting the go-ahead for treatment should be about more than simply asking a patient to sign their name or tick a box.

Jane O’Brien, head of standards and ethics, GMC, told Holyrood that she hopes it will prompt a “change in mindset” among doctors.

““We are hoping that it will encourage them to change some of the thinking that is still around in some parts of the profession, where they get consent from the patient and see this as a form-filling, tick-box exercise where they are getting a patient to agree to something.

“In a few cases, that will be a perfectly acceptable thing to do, but in most cases, we would rather see this as an ongoing process and dialogue between doctor and the patient in which the doctor isn’t giving something to the patient, the patient is making the decision and is being supported with the information that they need. So it is focusing on that change in mindset, really that we want to see doctors doing.”