[Patient satisfaction with anesthesia care in a general hospital].

INTRODUCTION The satisfaction level with health care reflects the quality of care from the patient's perspective. The aim of this study is to assess patient satisfaction with anesthesia care in a Portuguese general hospital by using the "The Heidelberg Peri-anaesthetic Questionnaire". MATERIAL AND METHODS The questionnaire was translated and tested based on psychometric quality criteria in a sample of 107 patients who underwent elective surgery as inpatients at Hospital de São João. The global satisfaction and for each dimension of care were calculated. We analyzed the differences between patients with different levels of satisfaction, identifying potential confounding factors. RESULTS The Portuguese version of the questionnaire has 32 items distributed in three dimensions: 'staff', 'discomfort' and 'fear'. The mean values of satisfaction for each dimension were 83.4%, 66.8% and 65.9%, respectively. The internal consistence was demonstrated by a Cronbach's alpha coefficient ranging from 0.776 to 0.875 in the three dimensions. Satisfied and dissatisfied patients differed in the three dimensions, but to a lesser degree in 'staff'. In the multivariate analysis we found significant influence of gender in the 'discomfort' dimension. DISCUSSION The questionnaire has good psychometric characteristics. The domain 'staff' includes three domains of the source questionnaire. CONCLUSIONS Its application revealed high satisfaction levels regarding the staff. Dissatisfaction was mainly seen in the "fear" and "discomfort" dimensions, the latter being significantly lower in males.