Wouter Leclercq

Preoperative education and informed consent in young adults undergoing bariatric surgery: Patient perspectives on current practice 79 5 MATERIALS ANDMETHODS Subjects A cohort of young adult patients (18 and 25 years old at the time of surgery) who had preoperative education and bariatric surgery in our bariatric center was selected from our hospital database and were invited to participate in the semi-structured interview. All patients were at least six months post-operative. Bariatric surgery included primary and revisional bariatric surgery. No specific exclusion criteria were applied for the study population. Medical Ethical Committee Approval of the local Medical Ethical Committee (MEC) was requested but deemed not formally necessary for this study by the MEC. Local pre-operative education and informed consent process Current practice involves multiple individual and group education sessions, combining presentations with didactic material (leaflets) (Figure 5.2). Bariatric nursing, psychology, dietetics and physiotherapy have specific education sessions. Additionally, a website and mobile application are available for patients containing more information regarding bariatric techniques, frequently asked questions, healthy recipes and more. Figure 5.2 Current SIC procedure. Study design An oral survey which consisted of closed-ended questions and open-ended questions was executed in the form of a semi-structured interview. Therefore, a mixed methods design was applied. This semi-structured interview consisted of three parts of which the focus is described in the next paragraph. Semi-structured interview The knowledge was collected through the method of semi-structured interviewing. The interviews were performed individually to allow the gathering of detailed information. All interviews were conducted in Dutch and performed in the hospital or over the telephone.