Assessing the Adequacy and Readability of Surgical Consents in Orthopedic Surgery

Background: Handwritten consent forms for medical treatment are commonly used despite the associated risk of documentation errors. We performed an internal audit of handwritten surgical consent forms to assess the quality of consenting practices within the department of hand surgery at our orthopedic specialty hospital. Methods: A sample of 1,800 charts was selected. Consents were assessed for procedure type, physician details, abbreviations, consistency, and legibility. Results: A total of 1,309 charts met the inclusion criteria. Two hundred and eight consents contained at least one illegible word. The name of the consenting physician was not listed or illegible on 114 forms. Medical abbreviations were found on 1.8% of all included forms, and 19 consent forms contained a crossed-out word or correction. Conclusions: Although the majority of the handwrit-ten consent forms were complete, accurate, and legible, there were notable errors in the consenting process at our institution. Documentation errors have medical and ethical ramifications. Further research into consenting practices is necessary to improve the quality of consent forms and the process of informed consent.