Relationship Between Patient Reported Postpartum Quality of Recovery and Maternal Satisfaction After Cesarean Delivery: A Prospective Observational Study

Measuring patient-oriented outcomes and satisfaction is important to guide meaningful changes in obstetric anesthesia care. Quality of Recovery (QoR) scores are patient rated measures, which provide a global measure of recovery after surgery. They go beyond the measure of physiological variables to include, physical, cognitive, emotive and functional outcomes. Satisfaction, in addition to QoR scores after anaesthesia is an important quality marker. Measuring satisfaction after the birth of a child is a complex and emotive subject. Understanding the factors that can influence maternal satisfaction may improve patient-centred care. Studies have shown that despite favorable clinical outcomes, many women undergoing caesarean deliveries continue to have poor experience with anaesthesia. These poor experiences go beyond inadequate pain control; many are due to poor communication with clinicians, lack of involvement in decision making, lack of provision of high quality education and information and a feeling of inadequate choice and control relating to decisions of the birth of their babies. In non-obstetric studies, satisfaction after anaesthesia has consistently been shown to be dependent on the information patient has received along with the quality of the communication and the quality of the anaesthetist-patient relationship.