Supporting Patient Understanding and Communication

Patients cannot make an informed decision if they do not understand, cannot process or remember the information, or cannot ask questions. Dental nurses support consent by calming the environment, encouraging questions, noticing non-verbal cues, and ensuring appropriate communication aids are available.

Consent support should help the patient make their own decision rather than persuade them. This includes respecting a patient's choices to accept, refuse, delay, request another explanation, or pick between reasonable options.

Useful support strategies

• Use plain language for non-clinical explanations and avoid jargon.
• Ask open questions such as, "What would you like us to go over again?"
• Give patients time to process information; do not fill every silence.
• Offer written, visual, Easy Read, translated, or digital information when available.
• Refer clinical questions to the dentist rather than guessing.

Communication needs may relate to hearing, vision, language, literacy, learning disability, autism, dementia, anxiety, pain, cultural expectations, or previous traumatic experiences. Family members and carers can help, but they should not automatically speak for the patient. For complex consent, use a qualified interpreter rather than relying on relatives.

Interpreter and accessible information systems

If a patient cannot understand the information because the communication method is wrong, the consent process is not yet complete.