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

Objective: To develop and to validate a scale assessing perioperative patient's satisfaction with anaesthesia (Evan). Study design: Descriptive and evaluative study. Patients: The study included 742 adults undergoing a surgical or a diagnostic procedure under general anaesthesia. Emergency, ambulatory and obstetrical cases were excluded. Methods: A multidisciplinary working party produced 85 questions focusing on various pertinent areas describing satisfaction. After a validation, 25 out of them were selected for the questionnaire, The latter was completed within 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, embarrassment, fear, pain-discomfort, information and physical needs. Scoring method followed a simple additive model: for each dimension, the scale scored 0-100. The global score represented the sum of the six dimensions also scored 0-100. Acceptability of Evan questionnaire was satisfactory, with a spontaneous 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 anaesthetic period was validated, allowing a global and multidimentionnal assessment of patient's satisfaction. (C) 1999 Editions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS.