Preoperative awareness level related to anesthesia in patients planned to have an operation under anesthesia

Objective:The knowledge of patients about anesthesia can be a factor that enables the establishment of a patient-physician relationship during interventional medical practices.Informing patients about anesthesia before precedure; reduced morbidity due to fear and anxiety cost effectively.It has also been reported that the satisfaction of the patient, surgeon and anesthesiologist has increased.Especially in our country, it is known that there is a traditional fear of not waking up from anesthesia (narcosis) and staying on the table (death from narcosis during surgery).Therefore, patients may experience intense distress when they undergo surgery.Knowing the public's level of knowledge, attitudes and behaviors in this matter will enable anesthesiologists to perform their approach to the patient better, and fulfill the enlightenment process that the patient needs. Materialsandmethods:This study is a prospective, analytical, cross-sectional study. The data were obtained through a questionnaire. The questionnaire includes questions about patients' awareness of their sociodemographic characteristics, anesthesia, duties and responsibilities of anesthesiologist and patients' concerns about anesthesia.Patients with mental retardation, those who did not want to participate in the study, patients with hearing and speech impairments were excluded from the study. The questionnaire consisting of 34 questions was administered to 583 patients between 18-70 years of age, whose operation was planned in Adıyaman Training and Research Hospital, by a physician in the preoperative anesthesia polyclinic. Written and verbal consent was obtained from all patients. Results:The sample of this study is composed of 58.8 participants, 39.8% female and 60.2% male. While 41.2% of the participants were not high school graduates, 27.6% received high school education and 31.2% received university education. The ages of the participants vary between 18 and 70 and the average age of the sample is 37.08 ± 12.71. When the differentiation of anesthesia fear in terms of demographic variables is evaluated; it was found that fears of men related to anesthesia were significantly higher than women, t (581) = -3.73, p <.001. In the advanced analysis, it was observed that the fear of anesthesia participants who were not high school graduates were significantly higher than those of high school and university graduates, F (2,580) = 13,765, p <.001. When the anesthesia fears of the participants were evaluated according to the sources they obtained the information about the anesthesia, there was a significant difference between the groups, F (4,578) = 5,76, p <.001. In the advanced analysis, it is seen that those who get information from health workers or health books have a lower fear than those who obtained information through a relative who is operatedor the previous surgery. As a result of the factor analysis conducted on the tetracoric correlation matrix of the Anesthesia Fear Scale, it was observed that a single factor structure with an eigenvalue above 1 and 74% of the variance emerged. Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was calculated as .92. Conclusion:Adıyaman University Training and Research Hospital is the only state hospital in the center of Adıyaman.Therefore, most of the patients in the center and districts of Adıyaman apply directly to our hospital or are transferred from district hospitals. Our hospital is almost the only center in our city in terms of the application of patients of different ages, educational backgrounds, occupations and socioeconomic levels.Thus, it has been a study that contributed to science in the name of public health and anesthesia in terms of evaluating patients in different groups and reaching the sample size representing a society.As a result of our study; It was determined that the patients did not have sufficient information and awareness about the anesthesia and anesthesiologist's duties and responsibilities. It is obvious that the individual efforts of anesthesiologists are important for patients to reach this knowledge and awareness.It is an effective method the anesthesiologists' giving sufficient time to the patients during the preoperative evaluation, trying to understand their concerns and fears, giving them reassuring and necessary explanations about the anesthesia plan and risks and having qualified communication to reduce the preoperative anxiety of patients. There is a need for more comprehensive studies on this subject in larger populations.