Informed consent: a post-operative assessment

[摘要] English: The researcher's observation that patients do not always understand whatthey are consenting to was confirmed by various sources. According toNorthouse and Northouse (1998: 270) and the South African Department ofHealth (2006: 11) patients' lack of comprehension in the process of informedconsent is a general phenomenon taking place in every hospital setting due tofactors such as lack of interpersonal relationships between the health careprofessional and the patient cultural practices as well as language.A quantitative, descriptive study design was used to describe the process ofobtaining informed consent prior to a surgical procedure in a hospital in theNorthern Cape. Specific objectives were to: (1) describe the current practiceof obtaining informed consent prior to a surgical procedure or an operation;and (2) make recommendations to relevant stakeholders for the purpose ofimproving the process of informed consent for an operation or procedure andthus the quality of health care.A structured interview, based on a questionnaire, was used to gatherinformation using convenient sampling as the primary sampling methodbecause it was feasible and affordable. A pretest was done before the maindata collection process, but the results were not included in the final results.Data collection took place over a period of 90 days and included 150participants who all met the inclusion criteria determined by the researcher.The researcher was assisted by a biostatistician who made use of StatisticalAnalyses Software (SAS) in order to analyze the data. Descriptive statisticsnamely means and standard deviations or medians and percentiles werecalculated for continuous data. Frequencies and percentages were calculatedfor categorical data, and the analysis was done by a biostatistician. Theresearcher organized the study results according to tenets of capacity toconsent to give meaning to the data and make it easy to understand. Figures and tables were used to present the large amount of detailed informationconcisely and clearly. More than one third of the sample was vulnerable dueto their low educational level and unawareness of their rights as patients.Unfortunately no effort was made to ensure that they fully comprehendedwhat they were consenting to.Recommendations focused on strategies to improve understanding bypatients and to inform patients of their rights and responsibilities.

[发布机构] University of the Free State