Video as a Patient Teaching Tool

Abstract

Eeting the anesthesiologist is one of the surgi- cal patient's highest priorities preoperatively (l), and several reports document that this interaction reduces patient anxiety (2-4). High anxiety may be associated with poorer surgical outcome (5), whereas improved patient education is associated with increased patient satisfaction (6) and improved clinical outcome (7). Video instruction may supple- ment conventional instruction techniques for general medical patients (8) and aid in obtaining informed consent (9). No study has specifically evaluated an instructional video about anesthesia as a tool for ed- ucating surgical patients about their upcoming anes- thetic and facilitating the anesthesiologist-patient relationship. The hypothesis of this study is that viewing an anesthesia preoperative video will improve patient knowledge and patient perception of the upcoming anesthetic and surgery compared to a standard pre- operative interview without video instruction.