Patient satisfaction with continued versus divided anesthetic care.

STUDY OBJECTIVE

To evaluate patient acceptability of continued versus divided anesthetic care.

DESIGN

Patient satisfaction ratings with continuous and divided anesthetic care were assessed by patient questionnaire. In addition, the effect of training anesthesia personnel in communication regarding divided anesthesia care was examined.

SETTING

University medical center.

PATIENTS

654 consecutive patients scheduled for elective surgery.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS

Overall postoperative patient satisfaction was high and not different between patients experiencing continued or divided anesthetic care (P=0.97). Asking patients before their operations about the importance of continued anesthetic care resulted in a highly significant difference between the two groups. In the continued anesthetic care model, patients felt it more important to experience continued care. In contrast, patients who were told that another anesthesiologist would take care of them rated the same question with a lower importance (P<0.001).

CONCLUSION

Before their operations, more than half of the patients felt it very important that they were visited and anesthetized by the same physician. Nevertheless, postoperative patient satisfaction was equally high regardless of whether they were anesthetized by the same physician who had visited them preoperatively.