Knowledge, Opinions and Attitude of Surgeons in Saudi Arabia toward Informed Surgical Consent

Alsaihati, Ali M; Alotaibi, Amer B; Alhawaj, Ali M; Alabdulsalam, Areej M; Alajmi, Nourah A; Boukhet, Mohamed T; Altulayqi, Waleed H; Alkahtani, Ali S; Almarek, Nawaf A; Alhussain, Zahra A; Al-Sultan, Ali S; Al Khalaf, Mohammed B; AlAbdullah, Hani A; Hafizallah, Abdulhalim B Hafizallah; Almutairi, Fahad F; Alanzan, Bothayna A; Alrashed, Mohammed S

doi:10.12816/0041522

Knowledge, Opinions and Attitude of Surgeons in Saudi Arabia toward Informed Surgical Consent

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Qatif Central Hospital

² King Abdullah Hospital

³ Ibn Sina National College For Medical Studies

⁴ King Saud University

⁵ King Faisal University

⁶ Taibah University

⁷ MCST

⁸ Princess Nora Bint Abdulrahman

⁹ Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University

10.12816/0041522

Abstract

Background: Informed consent has become a vital factor for the clinical treatment of modern practice in the medical field, it is participating in legal, ethical and administrative compliance side. However, informed consent is variably applicable and rarely fulfills its theoretical ideal. Disclosure of adequate information is very important before signing informed consent. It is important to make patient enable to take a proper decision with good knowledge about his/her case. Informed consent for the surgical procedure is consent that taken from the patient before surgical operations and invasive procedures after explaining advantages and disadvantages. Getting patient's signature for the consent of operations and the surgical procedure is surgeon's job. The opinion of the surgeon about informed consent is important, as that may affect the performance of surgeon in explaining procedure with its risks and benefits. Aim: Assessment of knowledge, opinion, and attitude of surgeons towards informed consents. Find out how to improve the quality of informed consent from surgeons' suggestions. Method: This cross-sectional study is questionnaire-based study. Our target was to reach many surgeons in Saudi Arabia with different specialties, different status and from different hospitals. We take our sample using random sampling technique. We selected surgeons from each hospital that our data collector can reach and enter easily. Collection of data was done by interview. Our questionnaire contained four parts in addition to demographic data part. The first part was asking about surgeons' opinions regarding informed surgical consent process. The second part was responsible for inquire about obtaining informed surgical consent. The third part is about the refusal to sign informed surgical consent. Last part is to ask about surgeons’ suggestions to improve informed surgical consent. Result: Total number of respondents was 140 (Response rate is 93.3%). Around 34% of participants agreed that surgeons don’t give adequate information about the surgical procedure. 33.6% insisted to know about their surgery. After asking each surgeon about the importance of informed surgical consent they selected the following answers in descending order; informing patients about advantages, hazards and alternatives (81.4%), Medico-legal importance (79.3%), decision taking about procedure (72.1%), hospital policy (50.7%) and surgical tradition (19.3%). Most of the doctors (85%) complained that sometimes, their patients refused to sign consent. Fear was the most common cause of singing consent refusal according to opinions of 62.9% of surgeons. Conclusion: Surgeons in Saudi Arabia have acceptable knowledge about informed surgical consent and how to obtain it. But still there were some opinions of surgeons opposite to what is practiced, and also some of them practiced something not ideal while obtaining informed surgical consents. However, most of the surgeons know the importance of consent and what is important to be disclosed in it. In general, the frequency of consent refusal was low.

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