A prospective observational project on assessing the satisfaction of patients visiting PAC(Pre-Anaesthetic Clinic) and the factors affecting the satisfaction score in tertiary care institute at South India.

**Background:**Patient satisfaction is an important measure of quality of health care and it is considered to be an integral part of service quality also. Anaesthetist plays an important role in perioperative management of a surgical patient at various stages from first visit at PAC clinic to discharge of the patient. There are lot of evidence that in-person assessment at PAC clinic is associated with reduction in morbidity and mortality. Aim of the PAC is not just to clear the patients for surgery, rather to prepare them for it by explaining about the need for optimisation of comorbidities, explaining analgesic plans ,ensuring lesser anxiety,better co-operation and improved satisfaction. But all these are lesser evaluated in our hospitals.In this background we decided to do an observational study on to assess  satisfaction of patients attending anaesthesia OPDs(PAC).

                       Primary Objective: Aim of the study is to determine the level of patientÂ’s satisfaction with pre operative anaesthetic visit

Secondary Objective: To study about the factors affecting satisfaction scores ,time delay at PAC, & understanding of PAC consent

Study design: observational study

Study population: **Patients posted for elective surgeries in the age group of 18-**80 years visiting PAC Clinic as an out patient.

Location:  Pre anaesthetic clinic (PAC) , Christian Medical College and Hospital, Vellore.

      Methodology:

This study will be conducted after institutional IRB clearance. Study will be conducted on 570 patients in the age group of 18-80 years whom are posted for elective surgeries visiting PAC Clinic as an out patient. Patients will be approached by primary investigator prior to surgery in the PAC clinic (pre anaesthetic clinic) in CMC vellore. Informed consent will be taken from the patient. After obtaining a written informed consent patients were given the questionnaire in English/ Tamil/Malayalam/Hindi/Bangla(Patient survey) . We planned to conduct face to face interviews with a sample of 25 patients to validate the questionnaire for our Indian population.

The questionnaire will be given to 20 professionals (Professional survey) including 5 Consultants in Dept. of Anaesthesia ,5 Senior residents,  1 MRO and 3 nurses who work at the PAC .

We are planning to take PEPAC questionnaire  (Patient Experiences with the Preoperative Assessment Clinic) as our starting point.PEPAC Questionnaire is a reliable, comprehensive and validated questionnaire to measure patient experiences with PAC clinic .It can be used to determine the service level of PAC in a single institute as well as to compare service levels across institutions also.Since this questionnaire has originated in UK ,hence  we are validating the language and appropriateness of content for Indian setup before starting the study.