مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - Are in surgical clinic health workers views and practices related to the informed consent consistent with each other?

Abstract :

Aim. To evaluate the views and practices of physicians, nurses and midwives working in surgical clinics regarding the informed consent. Methods. The sample of this descriptive study comprises 143 health professionals working in surgical units of three hospitals in the province of Sivas. Data were collected using the questionnaire prepared by the researchers. The possible total score to be obtained from the questionnaire ranges from 45 to 225. Low scores indicate that their knowledge about the informed consent is correct and sufficient and high scores indicate that their knowledge is negative and insufficient. The data were evaluated with the Student s t test, Kruscall Wallis and Correlation Analysis. Results. The mean age of the participants was 32.4 ± 6.0. Of them, 63.6% were female. Their total length of service was determined as 10.0 ± 6.5. 47.6% partly agreed that informed consent was applied correctly, 56.6% considered informed consent as the evidence ofproving, 57.4% stated that informed consent could not be obtained satisfactorily due to negativework conditions and the small number of the staff, 77.6% stated that informed consent wasobtained upon the hospital management’s demand and due to legal obligation and 62.2% stated that it was the responsibility of the whole team to obtain informed consent. The lowest and thehighest mean scores the participants obtained from the each item of the questionnaire were 1.60 ±0.66 and 3.00 ± 1.30 respectively. Their total mean score was 92.99 ± 21.75. While the mean scoregiven by health professionals to the sixth proposition stating that “information in the informedconsent must be clear and understandable” was the lowest, the highest mean score was given to the twelfth proposition stating that “the informed consent given by the patient when he/she is admitted to the clinic is not valid for all the procedures”. No significant differences were determinedbetween the total mean scores of the physicians, nurses and midwives (p 0.05). Conclusion. Although the health professionals’ views regarding informed consent was positive, they did not applied it as required. They were concerned about the legal aspects of informed consent rather than ethical dimension. In this context, it is necessary to develop effective institutional strategies during the education process regarding the implementation of informed consent.