An Informed Consent Program Enhances Surgery Resident Education

Abstract

Objective: First-year residents often obtain informed consent from patients. However, they typically receive no formal training in this area before residency. We wished to determine whether an educational program would improve residents' comfort with this process.

Design: Our institution created an informed consent educational program, which included a didactic component, a role-play about informed consent, and a simulation exercise using standardized patients. Residents completed surveys before and after the intervention, and responses to survey questions were compared using the signed-rank test.

Setting: This study took place at Temple University Hospital, a tertiary care institution in Philadelphia, PA.

Participants: First-year surgery and emergency medicine residents at Temple University Hospital in 2014 participated in this study. Thirty-two residents completed the preintervention survey and 27 residents completed the educational program and postintervention survey.

Results: Only 37.5% had ever received formal training in informed consent before residency. After participating in the educational program, residents were significantly more confident that they could correctly describe the process of informed consent, properly fill out a procedure consent form, and properly obtain informed consent from a patient. Their comfort level in obtaining informed consent significantly increased. They found the educational program to be very effective in improving their knowledge and comfort level in obtaining informed consent. In all, 100% (N = 27) of residents said they would recommend the use of the program with other first-year residents.

Conclusions: Residents became more confident in their ability to obtain informed consent after participating in an educational program that included didactic, role-play, and patient simulation elements.

Keywords: Interpersonal and Communication Skills; Patient Care; Practice-Based Learning and Improvement; Professionalism; education; informed consent; resident; surgery.