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14th Triennial Congress of the International Federation of Societies for Surgery of the Hand (IFSSH), 11th Triennial Congress of the International Federation of Societies for Hand Therapy (IFSHT)

17.06. - 21.06.2019, Berlin

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Informed Consent for trigger finger release – our experience with video consent for trigger finger release

Meeting Abstract

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  • presenting/speaker Ian Dhanaraj - Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, Singapore, Singapore
  • Thommen Kuruvilla - Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, Singapore, Singapore
  • Amir Adham - Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, Singapore, Singapore
  • Hannah Ng - Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, Singapore, Singapore
  • Vaikunthan Rajaratnam - Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, Singapore, Singapore

International Federation of Societies for Surgery of the Hand. International Federation of Societies for Hand Therapy. 14th Triennial Congress of the International Federation of Societies for Surgery of the Hand (IFSSH), 11th Triennial Congress of the International Federation of Societies for Hand Therapy (IFSHT), 11th Triennial Congress of the International Federation of Societies for Hand Therapy (IFSHT). Berlin, 17.-21.06.2019. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2020. DocIFSSH19-1262

doi: 10.3205/19ifssh0298, urn:nbn:de:0183-19ifssh02980

Published: February 6, 2020

© 2020 Dhanaraj et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. See license information at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Outline

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Objectives/Interrogation: Informed consent has become mandatory in the current environment for safe surgical procedures. There are specific legal requirements for what has to be disclosed to patients and the accompanying documentation.

Methods: This is a quasi-experimental pilot study on the use of video consenting for informed consent taking for trigger finger release. Prior to obtaining consent for trigger finger release, a validated consent taking video of the procedure that provide the patient with information about the nature of the surgery, the expected benefits, material risks and adverse effects, alternate treatments and the consequences of not having the surgery was shown to the experimental group of 5 patients undergoing the trigger finger release. Material risks included risks common to all surgery and risks specific for the proposed surgery including the very rare.

The control group consisted of five patients undergoing trigger finger release who were consented using the standard oral consent form with information provided by the surgeon in the clinic.

Following the surgery, the experimental group were then provided with similar information to the control group for trigger finger release and then subjected to a survey about the suitability and utility of the video consent procedure using the System Usability Scale (SUS) score. The control group were then shown the video consent information and then provided with the similar validated suitability and utility survey form.

Results and Conclusions: In general, the patients preferred the video consenting process for trigger finger release. The SUS scores were high for the video consenting process.

Even though video consenting as a process for informed consent has its utility in trigger finger release practice. However, the preliminary results showed that there is a challenge in the acceptance and relevance of informed consent generally in the local context. Further quality studies need to be conducted to see the relevance and acceptance of informed consent in local patients for common hand conditions in Singapore.