Process for obtaining Informed Consent for illiterate people

Abstract

The Informed Consent Form (ICF) is a document that is part of the process for obtaining the consent of patients or research participants, to guarantee their rights and assign their duties. The ICF, by containing a complex text, restricts, in some way, the freedom of decision of illiterate individuals. Objective: to evaluate the perception of illiterate individuals on the knowledge of the ICF and their forms of expression of consent to health procedures. Material and method: this is a quali-quantitative cross-sectional study, whose data collection was carried out with students of Youth and Adult Education (YAE) by means of recorded interview after reading a ICF model. The qualitative results were analyzed according to the Content Analysis Technique, proposed by Bardin. Quantitative results were analyzed applying the Chi-square test and logistic regression analysis using the JAMOVI software. Results: 32 studentes participated in the research. The data obtained showed that the previous knowledge about the ICF is low (34.37%), only 46.87% of the participants understood the document, 38% of them from the 4th stage of YAE. Almost all participants understood the benefits in applying the ICF in clinical practices and 75% claimed that images would facilitate understanding of the document. Conclusion: It was concluded that low literacy skills directly affect the autonomy to consent using the ICF. The difficulty in understanding the ICF may be related to textual elements, such as font size, use of difficult terms, and presentation of an extensive text containing a lot of information.