Interventions to promote informed consent for patients undergoing surgical and other invasive healthcare procedures

Randomised controlled trials and cluster randomised trials of interventions to promote informed consent for patients undergoing surgical and other invasive healthcare procedures and meta-analyses of outcomes where there were sufficient data were conducted.

Abstract

Informed consent is an important ethical and practical part of patient care.  We have identified efforts by researchers to investigate interventions which seek to improve information delivery and consideration of information to enhance informed consent.  The interventions used consistently improve patient knowledge, an important prerequisite for informed consent.  This is encouraging and these measures could be widely employed although we are not able to say with confidence which types of interventions are preferable. Our results should be interpreted with caution due to the high levels of heterogeneity associated with many of the main analyses although we believe there is broad evidence of beneficial outcomes for patients with the pragmatic application of interventions. Only one study attempted to measure informed consent as a unified concept.