Getting animated about trauma - Using video animation as part of informed consent.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Patient Communication
• Surgical Consent

Background:

• Trauma patients face time constraints for informed surgical decisions.
• Limited cognitive bandwidth can hinder understanding of risks and benefits during consent.
• Current consent practices may not fully equip patients with necessary information.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of video animations in improving patient understanding of surgical information.
• To assess the impact of video animations on patient retention and overall consent experience.
• To explore patient perceptions of video-assisted surgical consent.

Main Methods:

• Video script developed using the
• Discern
• instrument and patient focus groups.
• An animated video was created using GoAnimate and voice-over.
• 30 trauma patients with ankle fractures viewed the video before surgery and were interviewed.

Main Results:

• 81% of patient feedback was positive, citing improved information retention and understanding of technical details.
• Positive descriptors focused on enhanced information delivery and consolidation.
• Negative feedback included that videos cannot replace face-to-face consent and some found the detail off-putting.

Conclusions:

• Video animations are well-received and subjectively improve patient understanding and retention of surgical information.
• Video aids in sharing technical details effectively.
• Video should augment, not replace, essential face-to-face patient-doctor discussions.