Quality and accuracy of electronic pre-anesthesia evaluation forms.

Area of Science:

• Anesthesiology
• Health Informatics
• Patient Safety

Background:

• Hospitals are transitioning from paper-based to electronic systems for documenting patient health information in anesthesia.
• Traditional paper forms present challenges in data completeness and readability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the quality of paper-based versus electronic pre-anesthesia assessment forms.
• To evaluate anesthetist satisfaction with the new electronic system.

Main Methods:

• A quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest design without a control group was employed.
• Data were collected from 250 paper-based and 250 electronic forms at King Abdulaziz Medical City.
• Quality was assessed by missing items, errors, and unreadable entries; anesthetist satisfaction was surveyed.

Main Results:

• Electronic forms demonstrated significantly higher quality across all assessed categories (missing items, errors, unreadable items; p < 0.001).
• A high satisfaction rate of 81.65% was reported by anesthetists regarding the electronic pre-anesthesia form.

Conclusions:

• Electronic pre-anesthesia forms offer superior data quality and meet anesthetist expectations.
• The adoption of electronic forms is crucial for reducing critical preoperative data omissions and improving perioperative patient safety.