Low completiness of surgical consent form in Gahini District Hospital

Abstract

Background Gahini hospital is a district hospital which offers preventive, promotional and curative services, with special attention to people with disabilities. The incompleteness of surgical consent form has been discovered by accreditation evaluation done by central level and during the baseline assessment; it was found that 12.2% of surgical consent form were complete. Methods We conducted pre-post intervention study to observe the result of the implementation of surgical consent form completeness before surgery. In pre-intervention 187 files were audited as sample size selected randomly from January to April 2016. In post intervention 106 files were used as sample size selected randomly to analyze the root causes and select the intervention of surgical consent form completeness from December 2016 to March 2017. Results The surgical consent form completeness increased significantly from 12.2% to 57.5% with P<0.001. Conclusion and recommendations The findings indicate that staffs training on informed consent policy and regular follow up improve the completeness of surgical consent form at Gahini Hospital. The hospital should apply strategic problem-solving methodology to establish more quality improvement projects in the future.