An audit of consenting practices in a district general hospital. Can we improve?
Initially only 5% of consent forms completely met GMC guidelines. This demonstrates an alarmingly poor adherence to such guidance that plays a vital role in patient safety, patient ethics autonomy, not to mention potential medico-legal and clinical governance implications for surgical practice. Our intervention has improved the quality of consenting within our hospital according to these guidelines. With these interventions set to continue and further develop, we expect that the quality of the consenting process will continue to provide patients with all that it is designed to.
Preoperative transthoracic echocardiography identifies patients at risk of death or non-fatal cardiovascular events even late after renal transplantation. This suggests that echocardiography might be useful to identify patients requiring more aggressive long-term treatment of modifiable vascular risk factors.