Examining the level of awareness of patients in internal and orthopedic departments about informed consent

Informed consent is the patient's voluntary and revocable agreement to participate in decision-making. In order to obtain an informed consent, the patient must be completely conscious and provided with sufficient information.This research has been conducted with the aim of determining how informed the consents obtained from the patients hospitalized in Shahid Beheshti Hospital, Babol have been.

This cross-sectional study was conducted on patients hospitalized in the orthopedic and internal departments of Shahid Beheshti Hospital in Babol in 2021. Number of 424 patients were included in the study and Information was collected and recorded using of the checklist of demographic characteristics and patient awareness questionnaire about informed consent (regarding treatment).Data description and analysis was done using SPSS software version 18 and descriptive indices and T-test and ANOVA at a significance level of 0.05.

EthicalConsiderations:

In this study, ethical standards have been observed, including data confidentiality, obtaining informed consents, implementingthe plan after having obtained approval and obtaining a code of ethics.

The mean total score ofthe patients' awareness of the informed consent form was 52.2±4.26. There was a significant difference in the level of awareness in patients belonging to different age groups (P=0.037) and educational levels (P=0.040). However, there was no significant difference in terms of the patient's gender, hospitalization departmentand type of treatment (P>0.05).

The patients’ level of awareness was calculated to be over 50 and close to the maximum score of awareness of informed consent (i.e. 60). The level of awareness was significantly different for different age groups and educational levels. The highest score of awareness belonged to agreeing to undergo a treatment and ensuring that the recommended treatment will be performed in order to recover; thelowest score of awareness belonged to the possibility of the treatment’s being ineffective. In order to obtain more accurate results, it is recommended to conduct a multicenter study, a similar study on the patients undergoing a specific intervention or asystematic review.