Patients' Perception of Quality of Pre-Operative Informed Consent at Muhammad Medical College Hospital Mirpurkhas.

Abstract

Background:
We sought to find the patients’ views about the way preoperative informed consent (IC) was taken at Muhammad
Medical College Hospital (MMCH) Mirpurkhas.
Methodology/Principal Finding:
100 patients, who had operation 5-10 days ago under General Anaesthesia (GA) were randomly chosen at
MMCH. The patients who were seriously ill or who underwent a perioperative complication were excluded. All
patients were aged 16 or above. They were requested to fill in a questionnaire (in Urdu and Sindhi) and those
who could not fill the questionnaire were helped by the authors.
Results:
The patients were chosen from General Surgical Ward (62), Orthopaedic Ward (31) and Gynaecology Ward (7).
There were 50 male and 50 female patients, operated by 8 different surgeons and anaesthetized by 4 anaesthetists. The mean age of patients was 38 years. Though 74 patients admitted meeting the surgeon preoperatively,
only 56 had met the anaesthetist. 84 patients informed that the consent was taken by the House Officer (51) or
the Nurses (34).
Conclusions:
Despite the small sample size that do not permit to draw any firm conclusions, results indicate that preoperatively, very few patients get a chance to have their condition/ operation explained by the Surgeon and Anesthetist.