Paper
Friday, July 13, 2007
Nurse's role in the process of getting an informed consent
Sunhee Lee, MS1, Won-Hee Lee, RN, PhD1, Byung Hye Kong, PhD2, In Sook Kim, PhD1, and Sue Kim, RN, PhD1. (1) College of Nursing, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea, (2) Medicine, Chosun University, Gwangju, South Korea
| Learning Objective #1: understand the role of nurses to establish a better process of getting an informed consent in Korea |
| Learning Objective #2: understand the difference in perspectives of patient and of physician toward informed consent |
In the fast changing Korean society that is based on Confucianism, there is a difficulty in accepting the informed consent. Informed consent is based on the autonomy that patients have right to know about their illnesses and to make decision about their health; however, physicians consider the informed consent as an instrument to escape from legal responsibility and tend to avoid giving explanation or pass their responsibility to residents by giving an excuse that they do not have enough time. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of nurses in order to establish a better process of getting an informed consent in the Korean society. This study is examining the role of nurses in the process of getting an informed consent, through the interview of nurses and physicians in addition to the theoretical references by applying hybrid model. The research subjects were 12 patients, 12 nurses and 12 physicians from the selected departments including orthopedics, thoracic surgery, and OB/GYN from two university hospitals in Seoul and Gwang-ju. The result of the study shows that the role of the nurses is quite insignificant in the process of getting an informed consent. Some nurses wanted to participate in the process in order to advocate for patients and to verify if patients had received the information they needed while the others did not want to be involved in any processes. The Physicians expressed that they needed trained nurses who could explain to the patients instead of them due to their limited time, and they pointed out that the fact that residents were giving explanation was a problem and that it should be changed.