Informed consent - A simulation workshop for surgeons and gynaecologists

Background: Informed consent as part of the Israeli Patient's Rights Act (1996) is poorly known and only partly followed among physicians in Israel. Purpose: A one-day workshop on informed consent was designed with a dual purpose: a) to instruct on the legal requirements for obtaining consent to surgery for physicians in the surgical disciplines, and b) to practice effective and humane physician-patient relationships. Methods: Sixty-one residents and senior staff took part in 6 sessions of a one-day workshop. Participants watched twice and performed twice videotaped simulated consent conversations with standardized patients. Six professional actors personified patients with common surgical problems and different characters and behaviours. Each participant was challenged with medical problems in her/his discipline. Following the first simulation, the participants attended a group discussion concerning legal requirements for informed consent, and expectations of patients and physicians in terms of communication skills and patient-physician relationships. Three types of feed-back were employed: a) non-professional personal feedback from the actors b) personal feedback from a communication specialist using one of the videotaped encounters and c) group discussions of each of the 6 types of simulations with examples from the encounters. Results: Feedback from the participants was positive and showed interest and need of knowledge of the law as well as of communicative skills. Conclusions: There is a place, among residents and senior physicians, for experiential learning of how to effectively and humanely obtain informed consent.