Patients' perceptions of cardiac anesthesia services: a pilot study.

Area of Science:

• Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine
• Healthcare Quality Measurement
• Patient Experience Research

Background:

• Measuring patient perceptions of anesthesiologist services is crucial for assessing healthcare quality.
• Existing information on patient satisfaction with cardiac anesthesia is limited.
• Developing a reliable instrument is necessary to capture these patient perspectives.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate an instrument measuring patient perceptions of cardiac anesthesia services.
• To provide a tool for anesthesiologists to evaluate and enhance the quality of care.
• To identify key factors influencing patient satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

Main Methods:

• Development of the Scale of Patients' Perceptions of Cardiac Anesthesia Services (SOPPCAS) with 17 Likert-type and sociodemographic questions.
• Data collection at two time points: T-1 (postoperative day 4) and T-2 (15 days postoperatively).
• Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for construct validation, with Marlow-Crowne and Psychological Symptoms Index used to assess social desirability and distress.

Main Results:

• The SOPPCAS demonstrated a Cronbach alpha of 0.58, with PCA identifying four factors: patient/anesthesiologist interactions, anesthesia concerns, anesthesia experience, and pain management.
• Global mean patient satisfaction was 4.45 +/- 0.64 (on a 6.0 scale), indicating moderate-to-high satisfaction.
• Key satisfaction drivers included premedication, anesthesiologist empathy, and pain management; dissatisfaction stemmed from lack of information on blood transfusion and endotracheal intubation recall.

Conclusions:

• A rigorously developed instrument (SOPPCAS) now exists to measure patient perceptions of cardiac anesthesia quality.
• Overall patient satisfaction with cardiac anesthesia services is moderately high, contrary to some previous assumptions of very high satisfaction.
• The SOPPCAS can guide anesthesiologists in identifying areas for improvement in patient care and service delivery.