Questions to consider asking individual clinicians in e-mail or in-box surveys or one-on-one interviews include:
Do you know when you are required to obtain informed consent?
List the top 5 procedures where you ask patients to sign an informed consent form?
How do you obtain consent?
Do you get signature(s) yourself?
How much time (range) do you spend explaining procedure to patient?
Do you give patient time before deciding? Do you give educational material?
Do you always ask patients if they understand? How?
What written forms do you use? Is it a blanket form? (please provide photocopied examples)
Are you satisfied with the forms you now use? (if not, explain)
Do language, culture, disabilities, age, or low literacy in your patients impede your informed consent efforts?
What is the biggest difficulty you have with the informed consent process?
An example of a questionnaire for program directors of critical
care units or internal medicine departments or residency
programs is included here for your use or adaptation (Tool
2A: Informed Consent Questionnaire).
[Manthous 2003] (An added benefit of using the actual questionnaire
from Manthous et al. is that you will be able to show your
colleagues how they compare to a national sampling of physicians
in terms of when they obtain informed consent.) Similar
surveys can be created for other departments and specialties
that perform many surgeries or procedures.
Developed with a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
