Assessment of Informed Consent and the Impact of Simulation on Anesthesia Trainees

Introduction Over the years, the process of obtaining informed consent has evolved and now places an emphasis on the concept that patients should play a major role in medical decision making. Failure to adequately involve patients in making decisions regarding their health can lead to medicolegal consequences. Therefore, taking informed consent is a fundamental component of anaesthesia training. Simulation, for training, is an excellent tool that is being utilised widely in the training of medical professionals. The use of simulated training for teaching the process of informed consent is an innovative initiative that can provide improved results. Material and methods After approval from the institutional review board, a prospective clinical study was conducted at Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, Lahore, from August 2019 to September 2020. Sixteen anaesthesia trainees were randomly selected for the study. The study was divided into pre-interventional, interventional and post interventional phases. For data collection, a predesigned checklist was used. Data collected was analysed using SPSS version 23 (IBM Inc., Armonk, New York). The McNemar test was deployed to assess the difference between the baseline assessment and post-simulated training assessment; p-value < 0.05 was taken to be significant. Results Of the 16 participants, the majority were males (n= 13). A positive impact was observed in terms of improvement of the outcome of the following study components i.e., description of benefits of the procedure (p=0.01), disclosure of associated minor risks (p=0.005), disclosure of major risks (p=0.01), discussion of alternatives (p=0.001), teach back (p=0.001), documentation of patients' verbal agreement (p=0.01), and communication skills involving utilising the process of connecting, introduction, communication, permission, response, and exit (p = 0.01). Conclusion Simulated training had a positive impact in improving outcomes in the following study components: description of benefits of the procedure, disclosure of associated risks, discussion of alternatives, teach back, documentation of patients' verbal agreement, and utilisation of the process of connecting, introduction, communication, permission, responding, and exiting.