Patient satisfaction in anesthesiology: a narrative review

Abstract

Purpose of review Healthcare is increasingly expanding its view in outcome discussions to integrate patient-reported outcomes such as patient satisfaction. Involving patients in the evaluation of services and the development of quality improvement strategies is paramount, especially in the service-oriented discipline of anaesthesiology. Recent findings Currently, while the development of validated patient satisfaction questionnaires is well established, the use of rigorously tested scores in research and clinical practice is not standardized. Furthermore, most questionnaires are validated for specific settings, which limits our ability to draw relevant conclusions from them, especially considering the rapidly expanding scope of anaesthesia as a discipline and the addition of same-day surgery. Summary For this manuscript, we review recent literature regarding patient satisfaction in the inpatient and ambulatory anaesthesia setting. We discuss ongoing controversies and briefly digress to consider management and leadership science regarding ‘customer satisfaction’.

Ambulatory anesthesia: restructuring for success

“…Evidence is mostly based on retrospective analyses and assessments of associations [15 && ] and supports the possibility of providing safe and highquality office-based anesthesia, but highlights the importance of safety checklists, guidelines by professional societies, accreditation, appropriately trained and credentialed providers and high-end equipment, analogous to the inpatient setting [7,50]. Analysis of meaningful outcome metrics for recovery such as postoperative stay in the PACU or unit for phase 2 care, rate of care escalation, 30 day readmission rate or time needed to return to activities of daily living [51] or patient related outcomes such as satisfaction with care [52] are urgently needed to safeguard and further improve quality of care in ambulatory anesthesia. Rapid recovery is of special importance in an ambulatory setting.…”