For any consent to be valid the individual who is consenting must be deemed to be capable of making the decision; must be acting voluntarily; must have been provided with sufficient information; and must be capable of weighing up that information. This process is called informed consent.

A competent patient has a right to refuse any services or treatment offered or to refuse permission for you to use information for any other purpose. The basic biomedical ethics principle involved is that of respect of the patient’s autonomy.
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Many of the principles of the Code of Ethics are founded in the work of Beauchamp and Childress (2008) from Georgetown, USA. Their work established four basic biomedical ethical principles that together work to bring order and understanding to more specific principles of health care ethics. Whilst knowing these and what they encompass may not actually provide an answer to ethical problems in practice, they do provide a basis for trying to work out the answer. What is more, this basis is widely recognized by other health care practitioners.

Whilst the terminology can seem difficult or even incomprehensible, these four principles are really very straightforward. Beneficence is all about doing good, particularly doing what will benefit others, such as the patient and anyone else affected by an ethical decision. This is seen in the first principle of the Code of Ethics, where care of the patient is the first concern, and also in the second, that calls for the pharmacist or technician to act in the interests of the patient.
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The Code of Ethics is not law, although its enforcement is via the fitness to practice committees. The Pharmacy and Pharmacy Technician Order 2007 introduced the first legal requirement for the publication of guidance to standards of conduct, practice and performance.

The requirements of the Code of Ethics lie somewhere over and above the strict letter of the law. But what is ethics? It has been defined as the science of morals and there are various levels of morality to which we are each bound: personal; society; ethnic community; and professional. It relates to how we behave towards each other and sets rules by which people exist in harmony. It also concerns the values that lie behind making moral choices and that is very much one of the key uses towards which the Code of Ethics is put, as an aid to assisting in the resolution of professional challenges.
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In addition to abiding by legislation, registration as a professional practitioner carries with it the requirement to accept professional accountability and responsibility for practice. As a practicing professional, the individual pharmacist has a legal duty of care towards his or her clients or patients.

A pharmacist’s training and experience mean that he or she is an expert on medicines and their use. When called upon to provide a service or advice to patients the pharmacist has a duty in law to ensure that his or her knowledge is used to ensure that so far as is possible no harm will come to the user or recipient.
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