Awareness of Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of Medical Students and Surgical Trainees Regarding Surgical Informed Consent: A Cross-sectional Multi-centric Study from Northern India

Background: Informed Consent is the cornerstone of modern medical and surgical care. All patients have the right to be involved in decisions about their treatment and care. Obtaining SIC (surgical informed consent) is an important and essential skill that one must acquire in medical training, yet many residents receive very little formal education.

Methods: Multiple choice questionnaire designed and after pretesting circulated on Google formsTM having questions pertaining to knowledge, attitude and practice. Total 463 responses obtained and appropriate statistical tests applied in Microsoft Excel and StataSE.

Result: Knowledge-score remained constant for medical students and trainees, Attitude-score (18.59 to 18.93) and Practice-score (2.30 to 3.62) statistically significant increase in score with clinical exposure was noted. Gender wise difference were in A-score, females scored higher 18.87 and males scored 18.49. For trainee doctors unlike P scores, K and A scores did not increase with experience.

Discussion: Early intervention in undergraduate years and continuous upskilling is the need to bridge the hiatus of doctor-patient relationship. This necessitates scenario and role play based teaching, student teaching patient based learning regarding the SIC.

Conclusion: There is a Knowledge attitude practice gap present not only in undergraduate students but postgraduates residents regarding SIC, for which the current curriculum and the ongoing practical training is insufficient to bridge. Indian curriculum must make amendments to bridge it.