Wouter Leclercq

Challenging the knowledge base and skillset for providing surgical consent by orthopedic and plastic surgeons in the Netherlands: An identified area of improvement in patient safety 65 4 RESULTS Representativeness of the study Responses were received from 81 of the 94 OS departments (86%) and 39 of the 50 PS departments (78%). 335 individual answers (28%, 335 of 1177) from surgeons (S, n=267) and residents (R, n=70) were eligible for analysis (Table 4.1). General characteristics of both groups are presented in Table 4.2. Of course, age and experience differ between S and R, but there were also age and experience differences between OS and PS surgeons (Table 4.1). Table 4.2 General characteristics. OS PS Surgeon % Resident % Surgeon % Resident % Age <35 8 89 5 82 35-45 34 11 56 18 45-55 30 0 29 0 >55 29 0 10 0 Experience Resident 0 100 0 100 <5 years 29 34 5-10 years 15 27 >10 years 56 39 OS Orthopaedic Surgery, PS Plastic Surgery. Age: n=312 (missing value, n=23). Experience: n=335 Knowledge of SIC elements Just over half (OS 51%, PS 55%, ns) of the respondents were aware that a competence check of the patient is part of the SIC process (Question 18, Table 3). Almost all responders (93%) knew that providing information is the second obligatory aspect of SIC. Interestingly, the awareness on the third aspect of SIC (“recording”) was significantly better in the OS group compared to the PS group (P=0.002). Overall, one in four surgeons was not aware that recording of SIC is an essential step (S 74%, R 91%, P<0.002, not in table). Moreover, the PS group erroneously thought significantly more often than the OS group that a signature of either patient (P=0.0001) or doctor (P=0.0001) is necessary for adequately recording SIC (Table 4.3).