Do the patients read the informed consent?

Abstract

Background: Informed consent is a process which consists of informing the patient about the medical interventions planned to be applied to the patient s body and making the patient active in the decision making process. Aims: The aim of this study was to evaluate whether the patients read the informed consent document or not and if not, to determine why they did not read it. This was achieved via a questionnaire administered at the pre-anaesthetic visit to assess the perception of patients to the informed consent process. Study Design: Survey study. Methods: The patients were given a questionnaire after signing the informed consent document at the pre-anaesthetic visit. We studied whether the patients read the informed consent document or not and asked for their reasons if they did not. Results: A total of 522 patients were included during the two month study (mean age: 38.1 years; 63.8% male, 36.2% female). Overall, 54.8% of patients reported that they did not read the informed consent. Among them, 50.3% did not care about it because they thought they would have the operation anyway, 13.4% did not have enough time to read it, 11.9% found it difficult to understand, 5.9% could not read because they had no glasses with them, and 5.2% found it frightening and gave up reading. Inpatients, older patients and patients with co-morbidities were less likely to read the informed consent document than outpatients, and younger and healthy patients (p