A systematic review identified several robustly developed and validated instruments for measuring patient satisfaction with anesthesia, recommending their use over nonvalidated tools to prevent bias.
Systematic Review
Researchers should use available validated tools to ensure patient satisfaction with anesthesia is measured accurately and fairly.
Patient satisfaction is an important measure of the quality of health care and is used as an outcome measure in interventional and quality improvement studies. Previous studies have found that there are few appropriately developed and validated questionnaires available. The authors conducted a systematic review to identify all tools used to measure patient satisfaction with anesthesia, which have undergone a psychometric development and validation process, appraised the quality of these processes, and made recommendations of tools that may be suitable for use in different clinical and academic settings. There are a number of robustly developed and subsequently validated instruments, however, there are still many studies using nonvalidated instruments or poorly developed tools, claiming to accurately assess satisfaction with anesthesia. This can lead to biased and inaccurate results. Researchers in this field should be encouraged to use available validated tools, to ensure that patient satisfaction is measured and reported fairly and accurately.
Barnett et al. (Sat,) conducted a systematic review in Patient satisfaction with anesthesia. Validated patient satisfaction questionnaires vs. Nonvalidated or poorly developed tools was evaluated on Identification and appraisal of tools used to measure patient satisfaction with anesthesia. A systematic review identified several robustly developed and validated instruments for measuring patient satisfaction with anesthesia, recommending their use over nonvalidated tools to prevent bias.