Development and Psychometric Exploration of the Anesthesia Surrendering Instrument

Area of Science:

• Anesthesiology
• Psychometrics
• Patient Experience Measurement

Background:

• Understanding patient psychological states during anesthesia is crucial for improving care.
• The concept of 'surrendering' to anesthesia lacks a validated measurement tool.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and psychometrically test the Anesthesia Surrendering Instrument (ASI).
• To explore the construct validity of the ASI in measuring patient surrender during anesthesia induction.

Main Methods:

• An instrumental cross-sectional design was employed.
• Psychometric testing, including principal component analysis, was used for construct validation.
• A 36-item questionnaire was administered to 202 adult patients.

Main Results:

• The Anesthesia Surrendering Instrument (ASI) identified four core constructs of surrendering: preparation by avoidance, control, preparation by understanding, and acceptance.
• These four constructs explained 43.2% of the variance in the data.

Conclusions:

• It is feasible to measure patient surrendering during anesthesia using the identified four dimensions.
• The current dimensional variance (43.2%) is considered weak, indicating a need for further refinement and testing of the ASI.
• The ASI has the potential to serve as a context-specific patient-reported experience measure for anesthesia care.