[Citizen's understanding of anesthesia from a questionnaire survey]

In order to know general understanding or impression of anesthesia by citizens, we performed a questionnaire survey.

The participants for the survey were 218 citizens including 118 healthy persons with previous attendance to Kurume University Public Lecture for Citizens (group A) and 100 patients hospitalized in Kurume University Medical Center (group B). Their answers were collected prior to the lecture planned on the 39th Annual Meeting of Kyushu Society of Anesthesiologists.

The recovery of the survey was 78.9%. The percentages of persons who wanted to know "How and by whom I am anesthetized" were 93.2% and 72.6% in groups A on B, respectively. The percentage of persons who wanted to know the name of surgeon was 91.7%. The answers to the question; "Which doctor do you think is responsible for the treatment of an intraoperative adverse event such as acute myocardial infarction?"; were in the order of an internist 37.5%, a surgeon 29.7% and an anesthesiologist 18.0%.

We have realized through the questionnaire survey that the majority of citizens still consider an anesthesiologist as a technician merely putting patients into sleep for surgery. At the preoperative examination or round, we have to explain procedures and potential risks related to anesthesia to a patient and also have to answer patient's questions fully. We anesthesiologists should do more efforts to enlighten citizens at every opportunity so that citizens would understand our work fields and evaluate anesthesiologists correctly.