Knowledge, opinions and attitude of surgeons in Saudi Arabia toward informed surgical consent

Background: Informed consent has become a vital factor for the clinical treatment of modern practice in the medical field, it is participating in legal, ethical and administrative compliance side. However, informed consent is variably applicable and rarely fulfills its theoretical ideal. Disclosure of adequate information is very important before signing informed consent. It is important to make patient enable to take a proper decision with good knowledge about his/her case. Informed consent for the surgical procedure is consent that taken from the patient before surgical operations and invasive procedures after explaining advantages and disadvantages. Getting patient's signature for the consent of operations and the surgical procedure is surgeon's job. The opinion of the surgeon about informed consent is important, as that may affect the performance of surgeon in explaining procedure with its risks and benefits

Aim: Assessment of knowledge, opinion, and attitude of surgeons towards informed consents. Find out how to improve the quality of informed consent from surgeons' suggestions

Method: This cross-sectional study is questionnaire-based study. Our target was to reach many surgeons in Saudi Arabia with different specialties, different status and from different hospitals. We take our sample using random sampling technique. We selected surgeons from each hospital that our data collector can reach and enter easily. Collection of data was done by interview. Our questionnaire contained four parts in addition to demographic data part. The first part was asking about surgeons' opinions regarding informed surgical consent process. The second part was responsible for inquire about obtaining informed surgical consent. The third part is about the refusal to sign informed surgical consent. Last part is to ask about surgeons' suggestions to improve informed surgical consent

Result: Total number of respondents was 140 [Response rate is 93.3%]. Around 34% of participants agreed that surgeons don't give adequate information about the surgical procedure. 33.6% insisted to know about their surgery. After asking each surgeon about the importance of informed surgical consent they selected the following answers in descending order; informing patients about advantages, hazards and alternatives [81.4%], Medico-legal importance [79.3%], decision taking about procedure [72.1%], hospital policy [50.7%] and surgical tradition [19.3%]. Most of the doctors [85%] complained that sometimes, their patients refused to sign consent. Fear was the most common cause of singing consent refusal according to opinions of 62.9% of surgeons

Conclusion: Surgeons in Saudi Arabia have acceptable knowledge about informed surgical consent and how to obtain it. But still there were some opinions of surgeons opposite to what is practiced, and also some of them practiced something not ideal while obtaining informed surgical consents. However, most of the surgeons know the importance of consent and what is important to be disclosed in it. In general, the frequency of consent refusal was low

Assessment of knowledge and attitude of nurses towards ionizing radiation during radiography in Jeddah city, 2017

Background: The nurses working in radiation wards need to have an adequate knowledge about the risks and preventive measures of radiation exposure to protect themselves from health hazards of radiation as well as giving the patient the correct information about radiation exposure practices. Adiography in Jeddah city, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia [KSA]

Methods: A cross sectional study was assessed among 300 nurses in Jeddah city from June 2017 to August 2017. All the nurses were interviewed then filled up a questionnaire sheet. The questionnaire included 3 parts and the first part comprised questions about the demographics of included subjects, the second and third parts included questions about the knowledge and attitude of nurses toward radiation

Results: The majority of nurses [65%] had adequate knowledge regarding the ionizing radiation risk factors and protective measures and about 35% had poor knowledge. The level of nurse's attitude was good among 79% and poor among 21% toward ionizing radiation. The level of knowledge was significantly associated with the level of educational degree and magnitude of practical years of experience

Conclusion: the nurses' radiation protection knowledge and attitude were good among most of nurses. However, there is a need for other educational safety programs to increase the knowledge of the rest of nurses