Scale assessing patient's satisfaction with anaesthesia. I - Development and validation

Objective: To develop and to validate a scale assessing perioperative patie nt's satisfaction with anaesthesia (Evan). Study design: Descriptive and evaluative study. Patients: The study included 742 adults undergoing a surgical or a diagnost ic procedure under general anaesthesia. Emergency, ambulatory and obstetric al cases were excluded. Methods: A multidisciplinary working party produced 85 questions focusing o n various pertinent areas describing satisfaction. After a validation, 25 o ut of them were selected for the questionnaire, The latter was completed wi thin the 24 hours following anaesthesia by 742 inpatients. Results: Item analysis showed a homogeneous distribution of the answers to each item. Main component analysis allowed to explain 53% of total variance . Six dimensions were isolated by the exploratory analysis: anxiety, embarr assment, fear, pain-discomfort, information and physical needs. Scoring met hod followed a simple additive model: for each dimension, the scale scored 0-100. The global score represented the sum of the six dimensions also scor ed 0-100. Acceptability of Evan questionnaire was satisfactory, with a spon taneous non response rate of less than 1% and a completion duration at 11 /- 8 min. Conclusion: A self-completed questionnaire on patient's satisfaction with a naesthetic period was validated, allowing a global and multidimentionnal as sessment of patient's satisfaction. (C) 1999 Editions scientifiques et medi cales Elsevier SAS.