Dentists' knowledge and attitude towards informed consent taking in a Nigerian teaching hospital

There has been an increase in medical and dental knowledge in the world today. More and more people are getting to know their rights and cases of medical and dental liability is on the increase. Hence a proper approach towards obtaining informed consent in dental practice has become necessary. This study assessed dentists' perception on informed consent taking for dental procedures.

Self administered questionnaires were given to all dentists working in one of the teaching hospitals in the south west region of Nigeria. The questionnaires assessed the doctors' ability to properly define informed consent, knowledge of aspects relevant to informed consent taking and procedures for which they felt informed consent should be taking routinely.

The result revealed 10 out of 56 dentists (17.5%) were able to rightly and fully define informed consent. Almost all the dentists (98.4%) claimed to have taken informed consent at one time or the other, out of which 31 dentists (59.6%) claim that they always take verbal informed consent on routine dental treatment. However 21 (42%) of the dentists believed that informed consent scares patients, while 31 (54.5%) believed informed consent prepares patients better for the procedure. Generally the dentists agreed that the more invasive the dental treatment procedure was the more they felt informed consent should be taken.

Dentists knowledge about informed consent seems to be inadequate as only few of them were able to define informed consent. However their attitude towards informed consent seems to be more positive as almost all claimed to have taken informed consent from patients at one time or the other. Therefore regular update about knowledge and significance of informed consent should be encouraged.