The General Medical Council requires doctors to undergo revalidation every five years. This includes feedback from patients on the doctor’s politeness, listening skills, ability to explain conditions and treatments, honesty and ability to inspire confidence. This can be difficult for anaesthetists, whose role is often poorly understood by patients [1, 2], and whose patients are asleep or unaware much of the time they are working. Guidance was published by the Royal College of Anaesthetists in 2014 regarding feedback [3]. This study aimed to identify the time in a patient’s pathway that was considered as most appropriate from the patient perspective to provide such feedback.

Methods:
An online questionnaire was designed and made available to all patients after seeing an anaesthetist in the pre-operative assessment clinic in Dr Gray’s Hospital, Elgin. The questionnaire contained nine open and closed questions and data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS version 22).

Results:
In total, 106 patients responded, and 99% would be willing to give feedback.Most felt this would be somewhat (39%) or very useful (59%). The majority (91%) had undergone surgery before, and 70% of these patients were able to identify their anaesthetist when they had surgery. Fifty-eight percent of patients felt it was appropriate to be asked for feedback in the postoperative period,despite the risk of drowsiness and pain, and 43% felt this was the single best time, compared to after going home (21%), on the ward before the operation(18%) or after pre-assessment (15%). Patients were most likely to feel able to assess the doctor’s performance after the operation (59%) as opposed to after pre-assessment (25%). Most patients were willing to post their feedback after going home (89%). Differences between subgroups were not statistically significant, potentially due to the low numbers of patients who had not previously had surgery.

Discussion:
Current guidance recommends gathering feedback after pre-assessment; these results suggest strong patient support for feedback to be collected later in the patient journey. This guidance may represent professional opinion rather than patient wishes. Whilst previous experience of surgery modified responses, the majority of these patients still wished to provide feedback later in the pathway.This study suggests a need to re-assess current guidance to optimise the patient experience of giving feedback, given that only 15% of patients felt that current guidelines matched their preference.