Legibilidad de los consentimientos informados de España y Flandes

Zusammenfassung

Background. Regarding the right to health information, both laws Belgian and Spanish agree and guarantee this right due the necessity of providing patients with clear and adequate information at any time. (Article 4 and 5 Spanish law and article 7 of Belgian law). Initially, information should be given orally and this action should be registered in each clinic history (Article 7 in Belgian law and 4 in Spanish one).Belgian and Spanish laws: law 20 august 2002 of the rights of the patient, and Law 41/ 2002 on 14 November, of autonomy, duties and rights of the patients in information and clinical documentation subject. (Ley 41/2002 de 14 de noviembre, básica reguladora de la autonomía del paciente y de derechos y obligaciones en materia de información y documentación clínica)). Information is essential for a real informed consent process. Having access of a truly and comprehensible information from the beginning of the process facilitates a positive confrontation to illness and contributes to decrease anxiety or fear. It also prevents wrong believes. (Simón-Lorda, Júdez-Gutiérrez, 2001 and Escudero- Carretero, et a I, 2013). In addition, it is proved that if professionals provide oral information and then give patients written informed consent, it will work as a tool that guarantees real and truly information whenever a patient needs it. (Escudero- Carretero, et al, 2013). However, written informed consent has to be well done so as to achieve its virtues. The information collected in the informed consent should be based on the best science evidence available. This fact entails a preview researching work and a constant upgrade. (Escudero-Carretero, et al, 2013).In Spain, for instance, there are a lot of articles which prove that written informed consents have low readability, for example, Alvarez-Diaz (2011), Ezeome, et al, (2011), San-Norberto, et al, (2012) and Ramirez-Puerta et al, (2012). In these articles some written informed consents from some services of different Hospitals were analyzed. In Belgium, and although law of the patient's rights is clear about not giving written informed consent to patients if they do not ask for, in quotidian practice, surgeons tend to give written informed consents for large surgeries to their patients (Somville,FJ, Von Stritzky, M. (2008). This fact proves the need of analyzing written informed consents. The found bibliography shows that there are not articles in which all Belgian written informed consents have been analyzed. The same happens in Spain. So there is a hole in this field that has to be researched since it is necessary to know if those documents given to patients currently have good readability levels. And if they do not, we should be able to fix them to guarantee comprehension and improve patient's autonomy in their decisions. Results. The readability mean of the Spanish DCI is 48.78 according to the Flesch index. In the Inflesz index this mean represents the scale 'Some difficult^. The 65.3% of the DCI are included in the scale 'Some difficult', the 20.2% of the DCI are included in the scale 'Normal' and the 12.8% are included in the scale 'Very difficult7. The highest readability means correspond to Andalucía and Valencia. The lowest means correspond to Meiilla and Extremadura. The readability mean of the Flanders DCI is 46.4 according to the Douma index which represents the scale 'Difficult'. The highest readability mean corresponds to Limburg. The lowest mean corresponds to WestVlaanderen. The 59.2% of the DCI have 4 pages or more and readability mean of 47.43 in Douma. Conclusions. The readability's level of DCI in Spain and Flanders should be improved because their readability's levels are not included into 'Normal' scales. Furthermore, there is a huge variability of readability's levels among both Spanish and Flanders provinces and/or Hospitals. This fact clarifies that there is an inequity to the access of information among both Spanish and Flanders' citizens.