Digital and paper consent errors

Digital and paper consent errors
Rohin Wong, Mohammad Iqbal Hussain, Simon Toh, Christopher Rao, Edward R St John
British Journal of Surgery, 8 November 2023
Excerpt
    Over 300 million patients undergo an operation globally each year. The content (risks, benefits, alternatives) discussed with the patient is important to enable them to make the correct informed decision about their treatment options. The consent form is used to document the informed consent process. However, current consent practice and documentation are variable, and permit human errors of recall, incomplete form filling, and illegible handwriting, which can lead to inadequate shared decision-making, misunderstanding, complaints, and litigation. Expenditure on litigation owing to an inadequate consent process has increased across multiple healthcare systems. For example in England, UK, the number of claims and total annual spend related to failure to warn dealt with by NHS Resolution was 128 cases and €28 125 911 in 2011 versus 248 and €91 729 270 in 2021.
Digital consent has been proposed as a solution to address the challenges associated with standard paper-based consent because it improves shared decision-making and enables a bespoke informed consent process. It also facilitates the transition to paperless electronic health records, which is an increasing requirement of many global healthcare providers.
Previous systematic reviews have demonstrated that patient comprehension and satisfaction are improved by digital compared with paper-based consent. However, there has not been any synthesized evidence evaluating the impact of digital consent on error rates and standardization of informed consent. These factors were explored in the present analysis by comparing the error rates of standard paper-based and digital consent…