COMPARATIVE EVALUATION OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT CAPACITY AND CONSENT AMONGST DOCTORS WORKING IN PRIVATE AND GOVERNMENT SECTORS IN INDIA

Although the Indian definition of the term consent traces its origin to the New York Civil Code,as per Section 13 of the Indian Contract Act,1872 two or more persons are said to consent when they agree upon the same thing in the same sense.[1].The language of consent, as some agree, is more judicial or expository than legislative. Section 11 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 States that every person is competent to contract who is of the age of majority according to the law to which is subject, and who is of sound mind and is not disqualified by any law to which he is subject.[1].However capacity to consent must be distinguished from authority to consent.This study aims at observing and assessing the knowledge of doctors, regarding the aspects of consent in certain situations, that they mostly come across, while practising in various clinical and non clinical departments in private and government institutions across India. It is an observational, questionnaire based study that has been conducted in Peerless Hospitex Hospital and Dr B.K. Roy Research Institute over a period of 24 months(November 2017- October 2019) after obtaining ethical clearance.It has been observed that there is no significant difference in knowledge regarding consent-taking practices amongst doctors across varied age groups [p value of 0.5(>0.05)]. However there is significant difference in knowledge regarding capacity to give consent across varied age groups of doctors [p value of 0.028(<0.05)]. It is also noted that years of work experience does not significantly affect knowledge regarding consent-taking [p value of 0.554(>0.05)] but, does affect knowledge regarding capacity to consent [p value of 0.010(<0.05)]. Interestingly it has also been found that doctors practising in government and private healthcare institutions have significant difference in knowledge regarding capacity to consent [p value<0.05] but have almost similar knowledge regarding consent itself [p value of 0.152(>0.05)]. Number of working hours(full/part time) does not have any significant effect on knowledge amongst doctors. It has also been observed that doctors working across various disciplines, irrespective of government or private institutions, have significant difference in knowledge regarding consent and capacity to consent, with the maximum knowledge possessed the discipline of Emergency Medicine(mean value of 4.52 and 3.08 respectively).