In theory, people support the presence of trainees for medical procedures. But when it comes to personal practice … not so much.
So says a study in the Archives of Surgery, which examined patient perceptions and willingness to participate in resident education. More than 8 in 10 patients consented to having an intern participate in their surgical procedure, and more than 9 in 10 consented to the presence of a resident. But when presented with a real situation of trainee participation, not even 1 in 5 said OK.
More than half of the survey respondents said that knowing that their operation was a trainee’s first would affect their consent negatively.
As explained on MedPage Today, in the 1980s surgeons thwarted proposed legislation to mandate “informed consent” when trainees were involved in a patient’s procedure. The docs had argued that such patient consent referred only to the “responsible” surgeon who provides supervision and oversight. Today, the study’s researchers noted, it’s still common practice not to inform patients of trainee participation.
In an accompanying commentary to the study, Ali Salim, M.D., wrote “”As part of [the informed consent] discussion, it seems obvious that patients would want the extent of involvement of surgical trainees during a surgical procedure to be disclosed, but current ethical and legal requirements for informed consent for care by trainees have not been well elucidated.”
“To my knowledge,” Salim wrote, “no specific requirement or guidance exists regarding disclosure of the extent of participation of surgical trainees.”
If that just seems wrong, the writers concur that full disclosure of trainee participation would affect their education negatively, because patients might refuse permission for them to participate in their care. More than 8 in 10 survey respondents indicated they wanted to be informed about trainee participation.
So here’s the quandary: Medical students can’t learn how to be good doctors without hands-on training, and although patients understand that, they don’t want to be the individual guinea pigs. The authors suggested that patients should be better educated about the nature of a teaching hospital and the benefits for patients to have trainees participating in procedures. But they remain wary about full, mandatory informed consent.
“We believe that broad calls for routine mandated disclosure should be carefully planned and analyzed prior to implementation to avoid any adverse effects on surgical training,” they concluded.