Development and validation of Daycare Anesthesia Satisfaction (DAS) questionnaire to assess patient's satisfaction with daycare anesthesia.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The patient's satisfaction can be considered as a unique indicator of the quality of healthcare provided. The advantages of patient satisfaction surveys rely heavily on using standardized, psychometrically tested data collection approaches. There is a lack of a proper, psychometrically robust instrument to evaluate the patient's perioperative satisfaction following all types of anesthesia in daycare facility. Hence, this study aimed to develop a Daycare Anesthesia Satisfaction (DAS) questionnaire to measure the patient's satisfaction with the experience of daycare anesthesia services.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: A preliminary pool of questions was generated from research literature, expert consultations, and pilot tested on patients. The internal consistency and reliability of the preliminary questionnaire was evaluated by calculating Cronbach's alpha, intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and feasibility with the formation of a final 27-item questionnaire. In the next step, the questionnaire was distributed to a larger group of patients in the phase 2 of postanesthesia care unit (PACU). The results were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis to determine the goodness of fit of the questions under each domain.

RESULTS: The internal consistency of the preliminary questionnaire as measured by Cronbach's alpha was 0.929. Intraclass correlation coefficient measured for test-retest reliability was 0.97 (95% confidence interval [CI]). Feasibility was confirmed, as 75% of the patients could fill the questionnaire within 15 min. In the second step of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), questionnaire has been shown to have goodness of fit with Bentler's comparative fit index (CFI) of 0.99 that is greater than the suggested cutoff of 0.90. The root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) of 0.09 is also close to the suggested cutoff of 0.06.

CONCLUSION: This systematically developed and validated, 27-item DAS questionnaire can be tentatively recommended to be used to measure patient's satisfaction with day care anesthesia services following all types of surgical procedures, under various types of anesthesia.