Involving Medical Students in Informed Consent: A Pilot Study

Studies have reported that patients often sign consent documents without understanding the content. Written paperwork, audio-visual materials, and decision aids have shown to consistently improve patients’ knowledge. How informed consent should be taken is not properly taught at most universities in Germany.

In this cross-sectional study, we investigated how much information about their procedure our patients retain. In particular, it should be elucidated whether an additional conversation between patients and properly prepared medical students shortly before surgery as an adjunct to informed consent can be introduced as a new teaching unit aimed to increase the understanding of surgery by patients and students. Informed consent of all patients had been previously obtained by three surgical residents 1–3 days in advance. All patients had received a copy of their consent form. The same residents developed assessment forms for thyroidectomy, laparoscopic cholecystectomy, umbilical hernia repair, and Lichtenstein procedure for inguinal hernia, respectively, containing 3–4 major common complications (e.g., bile duct injury, hepatic artery injury, stone spillage, and retained stones for laparoscopic cholecystectomy) and briefed the medical students before seeing the patients. Structured one-to-one interviews between students (n = 9) and patients (n = 55) based on four different assessment forms were performed and recorded by students. Both patients and students were asked to assess the new teaching unit using a short structured questionnaire.

Although 100 % of patients said at the beginning of their interview to have understood and memorized the risks of their imminent procedure, 5.8 % (3/55) were not even able to indicate the correct part of the body where the incision would take place. Only 18.2 % (10/55) of the patients were able to mention 2 or more complications, and 45.3 % (25/55) could not even recall a single one. 96.4 % (53/55) of the patients and 100 % (9/9) of the students taking part in this teaching unit found that this exercise represents a significant improvement of clinical teaching and recommended to introduce this teaching unit as a standard on the normal wards.

Students teaching patients (SteP) appears to be an easy and cost-efficient tool to improve patients’ education and students’ learning. Students become aware of how difficult it is to explain surgical procedures and complications to patients and patients are better informed about their treatment. We plan to (i) introduce the STeP protocol as a standard teaching project in daily clinical routine and (ii) continue the pilot study to reach representative student and patient numbers for a possible final statement and derived recommendation.