Measuring satisfaction and anesthesia related outcomes in a surgical day care centre: A three-year single-centre observational study.

STUDY OBJECTIVE

To evaluate patient satisfaction and patient reported anaesthesia related outcome parameters after outpatient surgery.

DESIGN

A three-year (2013-2016) observational study.

SETTING

A surgical day care centre embedded in a tertiary care, university hospital.

PATIENTS

Adult Dutch-speaking patients who underwent surgery under general or regional anaesthesia on an outpatient basis (n=5424).

INTERVENTIONS

A questionnaire was developed to evaluate patients' satisfaction with care during their hospitalisation in the surgical day centre, as well as to assess their reports of anaesthesia related outcomes.

MEASUREMENTS

Various aspects of care were measured, including care by nurses, care by doctors, organisational and safety items. Variation in satisfaction and surgery and anaesthesia related outcomes as a function of different categories (gender, age, education, type of anaesthesia, discipline and era) were also investigated.

MAIN RESULTS

Confirmatory factor analysis showed an excellent fit to the hypothesized factors of the survey. Satisfaction scores were very high for different aspects of care, resulting in 98% of patients being (very) satisfied (59.1% very satisfied, 38.9% satisfied). Male (p=0.0003), higher educated (p<0.0001) and older patients (p<0.0001) were more likely to be very satisfied. Postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) were frequent (nausea: 13.9%, vomiting: 3.3%), and more present in female than in male patients (p<0.0001). Pain scores at the PACU differed among disciplines (p<0.0001) were higher in female patients compared to male patients (3.41% versus 2.54%, p<0.0001) and after general anaesthesia compared to regional anaesthesia (3.25% versus 0.39%, p<0.0001) and decreased with higher age (p=0.0001) and education level (p=0.0033).

CONCLUSIONS

Whereas satisfaction with all aspects of care is generally high, the results regarding pain and PONV should inspire quality improvement initiatives. The questionnaire developed in this study can be a vehicle to assess and improve the quality of care in surgical day care centres.