Knowledge and attitude of foot care among diabetics in Prevention of amputation in Saudi Arabia

Diabetes mellitus is a prevalent endocrinal disorder in Saudi Arabia. Diabetic foot ulceration occurs in about one fifth of diabetics, and significantly increases the risk of gangrene and amputation. Early and proper foot care is essential to prevent such deleterious complication

Objectives: the aim of this review is to study the knowledge and attitude about foot care among diabetics in Saudi Arabia and its impact on prevention of amputation

Methods: to achieve this aim, online database was searched for articles reporting knowledge and/or attitude of Saudi patients about foot care. Results yielded from this search were quickly inspected; the titles and abstract were quickly read to select related studies

Results: up to one fifth of diabetic patients had poor knowledge about their foot care, and in spite of regular checkups, they lacked awareness of signs and symptoms of diabetic foot infection. However, when educational programs were implemented, complications rate has significantly declined

Discussion: previous literature studies indicated that Saudi diabetic patients had moderate to poor knowledge about their illness in general. Most of them are not adequately educated about the complications of their illness, and how to deal with them. However, when engaged in systematic educational programs, they were highly responsive and compliant and their new adopted attitude and knowledge about the illness decreased their amputation as well as other complications rate

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