Enhancing Resident Education in Informed Consent Through Digital Checklists

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Surgical Training
• Informed Consent

Background:

• Surgical residents often lead informed consent discussions with limited experience, potentially impacting risk disclosure accuracy.
• Teaching hospitals face challenges in ensuring comprehensive risk communication during patient consent processes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate if a digital risk checklist within a video platform improves surgical resident informed consent quality.
• To assess the utility of digital checklists as an educational tool for surgical residents.

Main Methods:

• General surgery residents (R1-R5) used traditional written consent and a digital checklist platform for common procedures.
• Checklist accuracy was compared against a gold standard risk profile determined by attending surgeons.
• Performance metrics included accuracy, risk counts, and variations by training level.

Main Results:

• Digital checklists significantly improved risk identification accuracy (70.4% vs 50.7%, P < 0.001) compared to written consent.
• Improved accuracy was observed across all resident training levels and surgical procedures.
• Checklist use led to increased selection of irrelevant risks, especially among junior residents (32% vs 15%, P < 0.01).

Conclusions:

• Digital risk checklists enhance the completeness and accuracy of resident-led informed consent.
• The over-selection of irrelevant risks by junior residents indicates a need for checklist refinement.
• Digital consent tools show potential as effective educational aids in surgical training programs.