"Anaesthesia and Anaesthesiologists: How Famous are We among the General Population?"- A Survey

Anaesthesia and anaesthesiologist from the very beginning has obtained "Behind the screen" role. This is of great concern as the field of Anaesthesiology has expanded its services to various specialities like intensive care, post-operative pain management, labour analgesia, accident and trauma management, casualty etc. The general public still do not consider us as true doctors.

A survey was done among 200 surgical patients in a tertiary care hospital attached to teaching institution by providing a questionnaire with 15 questions.

26% did not know that anaesthesia exists as separate speciality, 54% felt anaesthesiologists were somebody in the OT, 40% were under the impression that their job was over ones patient was put to sleep. The mode of gathering information about anaesthesia played an important role. 52.5% patients had gathered their information from other people, 30% from surgeon and only 17.5% from the media (both print and electronic).

This study portrays the ignorance among the general population regarding the important role played by anaesthesiologists. This ignorance may partly be attributed to the anaesthesiologist as we are very casual when it comes to spending quality time with patients in the peri-operative period and educating them about our role and our speciality.