Abstract
BACKGROUND: The degree of satisfaction is an indicator of the quality of health care. Its measurement allows to understand the strengths and weaknesses associated with the anesthesia procedure and to improve the quality of service. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the validity and consistency of a new rapid scale of patient satisfaction with the anesthetic procedure. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Comparative, longitudinal study in patients in post-anesthetic care. It consisted of two phases: Phase 1: Development of a Likert-type rapid scale to assess post-anesthesia patient satisfaction. Patients were pilot tested to evaluate the wording until 2 consecutive rounds were achieved. Phase 2: The developed instrument (ERSAPA according to its initials in Spanish) and the control questionnaire (LPPSq) were administered to patients after their discharge from the Post-Anesthesia Care Unit. Cronbach's alpha was used to evaluate the internal consistency between both tests, and Sperman's rho for convergent validity. RESULTS: A total of 250 patients were surveyed. An overall satisfaction was achieved in 82.46% of the population. The domain with the highest agreement was pre-anesthesia consultation care. The internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) was 0.84, with a Spearman's convergent validity of 0.719 (p = 0.001), and an intra-observer reliability analysis by intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.945 (p = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The ERSAPA scale is consistent and valid for assessing patient satisfaction in the Anesthesia Service.