A Well-understood Surgical Informed Consent: A Scoping Review

A Well-understood Surgical Informed Consent: A Scoping Review
Rieke Cahya, Adik Wibowo
Unnes Journal of Public Health, January 2023
Open Access
Abstract
The implementation of surgical consent has shifted from simply getting a signature to a focus on doctor-patient communication. Providing adequate information is very important for patients in making decisions so that patients voluntary agree to medical action. Understanding of the medical information that has been provided is the basis for patients to give consent, but in reality many patients find it difficult to understand and doctor fail to administer proper information.The purpose of this scoping review are to evaluate patient’s understanding of the standard surgical informed consent prosess or those given by other methods and to identify factors that influence this patient’s understanding. Three electronic database (ProQuest, ScienceDirect, and Scopus) were used to search literature from 2017 until 2022. A total of 391 articles were identified and 25 articles were selected according to the PRISMA guidelines and the PCC framework. 9 of 11 articles stated that patient understanding level was low. Factors that influence it include education background, age and language limitations. 12 studies (85%) showed that patient understanding improved with the use of additional information media. Overall, the patient’s understanding of surgical informed consent is still low. Communication between doctor and patient plays a big role in it. Various interventions to improve the communication process can be used to improve patient understanding.

Editor’s note: Unnes Journal of Public Health is published by Universitas Negeri Semarang (UNNES) in cooperation with the Association of Indonesian Public Health Experts.