Degree Name
Nursing Practice, DNP
Publication Date
9-21-2026
First Advisor
Sandy King
Second Advisor
Alisha McAfee
Abstract
Surgical consent errors increase the risk of inaccurate documentation, compromise patient safety, and disrupt procedure times. Evidence indicates that adopting electronic consent can optimize workflow, support accurate and complete documentation, improve readability, and enhance record reliability. This project evaluated whether initiating electronic consent, compared with handwriting surgical consent forms, reduced the number of improper surgical consent forms completed over six weeks. Roy’s Adaptation Model guided the change process, and the Theory of the Person as an Adaptation System provided the theoretical basis. The Plan-Do-Study-Act model supported evidence-based implementation of the electronic consent intervention. The quality improvement project was conducted on a 28-bed medical-surgical unit specializing in vascular surgical patients, with seventeen nurses participating in a quasi-experimental pre-post study. Thirty handwritten vascular surgical consents were reviewed prior to implementing education on electronic consent. Subsequently, thirty electronic consents were evaluated for documentation errors. A pass-or-fail classification was assigned using an Excel codebook with parameters for spelling, required fields, date and time, staff signature and title, and abbreviation use. Handwritten consent documentation had a 43.3% failure rate, compared with 10% for electronic consent. Chi-square analysis showed a statistically significant association between consent delivery mode and performance χ²(1, N = 60) = 8.52, p = .004, φ = .38. Key limitations included a small nurse sample size and excluding consents from nurses who did not meet project eligibility criteria. Surgical consent errors significantly decreased after incorporating electronic consent, supporting continued use at the project site.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Fogle, Alexis, "Quality Improvement Project: Electronic Consent's Influence on Consent Error Rates" (2026). Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects. 386.
https://arch.astate.edu/dnp-projects/386
