INFORMED CONSENT IN DENTISTRY: PERCIEVED IMPORTANCE AND LIMITATIONS IN KHYBER PUKHTUNKHWA

Abstract

Objectives: To assess the current attitudes regarding informed consent and its perceived limitations in the local dentist community.
Materials and methods: This descriptive cross sectional study was carried out at two dental teaching hospitals of Peshawar, Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, namely Khyber College of Dentistry and Sardar Begum Dental College. A structured close ended questionnaire was used to obtain data from the dentists including the teaching staff, postgraduate residents, house officers and final year students. The aim was to assess the importance of informed consent in routine practice of dentistry. Likert scale was used to score the relative difficulty of the various obstacles faced by the dentist in obtaining consent. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS version 17.
Results: Out of a total of 300 distributed questionnaires, 224 were received. Informed consent was considered an integral part of dentistry by 223 participants and 109 of them assented to routinely obtained consent. Verbal consent was the most favored manner. Of the 224 participants, 82.6% rated it as both ethical and legal obligation. About 51.8% were in a practice of obtaining consent for multiple dental procedures. Six potential hurdles were evaluated, out of which excessive patient load was considered as the biggest and ime consuming nature of obtaining consent and lack of options in treatment as the smallest obstacle.
Conclusion: Most dentists are aware of the importance of informed consent in practical dentistry and consider it as an ethical and legal obligation. Verbal consent is the preferred means of obtaining consent from patients for most dental procedures. There is a general perception that major/minor oral surgical procedures are the ones that warrant consent more than any other specialty. Among the various potential obstacles, excessive patient load is the biggest hurdle to obtaining informed consent from the patients.