The Quality of Informed Consent from Inpatients' Viewpoint at Educational Hospitals of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences: A Qualitative Study

Obtaining informed consent is for protection of patients' rights. The aim of informed consent is not decreasing physicians' responsibility.Informed consent assists the patient in making a decision concerning their care, improve their satisfaction, and decrease legal litigations. This study examined patients' attitude toward the quality of informed consent and its challenges in educational -clinical settings. Current qualitative research was simple content analysis. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 hospitalized patients who were selected by purposeful sampling method considering type and severity of the disease, gender, age, and satisfaction or dissatisfaction from the management. The data was analyzed using MAXQDA 2007 software. Primary codes and categories were extracted then the findings were presented based on the main. Five themes were extracted from the data: "meaning, importance and status of consent in medicine", "consequences of obtaining consent", "the role of patient and therapist in the process of informed consent", "challenges of making informed consents" and "facilitators in the process of informed consent"; all could define and compile the main theme “doctor, patient, and procedural elements, three pillars of informed consent”. Inadequate explanation to the patient, signing the form prior to read it, lack of trust to the practitioner, disregarding patients' psychologic needs and stress and obtaining the consent by someone other than the physician was among the main reported challenges of informed consent. Correction and standardization of obtaining informed consent's culture requires knowledge about current situation followed by training, enforcement, supervision, encouragement, and punishment.  Collaboration of health care team needs comprehension of necessity and importance of this issue and its consequences.