Perception about informed consent for surgical procedures as part of patient safety practice among service providers and patients in Addis Ababa hospitals, 2017

Background: Informed consent is defined as voluntary authorization, by a patient or research subject, with full comprehension of the risks involved, for diagnostic or investigative procedures, and for medical and surgical treatment.This voluntary authorization of patient to receive medical/surgical treatments are often violated in different health care institution. The utilization of the informed consent procedure by providers are determined by different factors. Objective: The study objective is to assess perception of Informed Consent and Patient Safety Practices about Surgical Procedures among Service Providers and Patients in Addis Ababa. Method: Facility based mixed study with both quantitative and qualitative designs was conducted from May14, to June 14, 2017. For the quantitative part, a cross sectional study design was used, data was gathered from 338 patients admitted to the surgical wards, and review documents from 258 post-operative patients participated in decision of surgical procedure for comprehensive information of informed consent in selected hospitals of Addis Ababa. For qualitative study an interviewer guided in-depth interview was used for data collection during the same period during quantitative data collection to explore patient safety practice and implementation of information about surgical procedures from physicians and service providers. Result: From providers' perspectives, patient safety practices are not fully implemented. There was statistically significant association between awareness on surgical informed consent and being widowed, higher education and occupational being students. There is no statistically association between age, sex and residential area with surgical informed consent. The odds of being widowed/separated among participants for informed surgical consent was 8.2 times higher than those who had not married [AOR=8.167 CI (1.414- 47.182. Patients whose higher education were almost two times likely to surgical informed consent than those with not educated [AOR=2.033 ...