Completion of the informed consent in radioguided surgery by the General Surgery and Nuclear Medicine services of a radioguided surgery unit

Objective

To identify the frequency of errors in informed consent documents in radioguided surgery in a third level hospital and to detect possible causes or factors associated with a greater risk of error.

Material and methods

Informed consent forms of a total of 369 radioguided surgery interventions, completed by the Nuclear Medicine and General Surgery services, were analyzed, and the degree of completion of the forms and its correlation with the physicians responsible, type of pathology, intervention, and waiting time were compared with the completion of consent by another specialty.

Results

Errors were identified in 22 consent forms from Nuclear Medicine and 71 from General Surgery. The most common error was the absence of identification of the physician responsible (17 in Nuclear Medicine, 51 in General Surgery), and the second most common was the absence of a document (2 in Nuclear Medicine, 20 in General Surgery). There were significant differences in the errors made depending on the doctor in charge, with no significant correlation with the other variables.

Conclusions

The physicians responsible were the main factor associated with a greater risk of error in the completion of informed consent forms. Further studies are needed to analyze the causal factors and possible interventions to minimize errors.