[The evaluation of preoperative anesthetic visit in our hospital]

The preoperative visit by an anesthetist has been thought to be important for the assessment of patient and to communicate with them. However, there are few reports on the visit in Japan until now. The effect of preoperative anesthetic visit in our hospital was estimated by interviewing patients just before surgery who had received a visit by their anesthetist. The answers from sequential 346 scheduled surgical patients for 8 weeks were obtained. Only 72 patients were able to recall the name of their anesthetists. About half of patients believed that anesthetist just had put the patient to sleep and relieved them from pain. We measured the number of treatments each patient could remember that had been explained by the anesthetist on the visit, and found it was unexpectedly small at the interview. These data suggest that our preoperative visit may not be satisfying in view of making good relationship between patients and anesthetists, and educating patients for recent anesthesia. We should make an effort to educate the patients about up-to-date and reasonable anesthesia.