Importance of patient and family satisfaction in perioperative care

As healthcare systems increasingly shift focus toward providing high-quality and high-value care to patients, there has been a simultaneous growth in assessing the patient's experience through patient-reported outcomes. Along with well-known patient reported outcomes such as health-related quality of life and current health state, patient satisfaction can be a valuable assessment of quality. Patient and family satisfaction measures not only affect a patient's clinical course and influence overall patient compliance, but are increasingly used to gauge physician performance and guide reimbursement. The paucity of standardized measures and the subjective nature of patient and family satisfaction impairs a surgeon's ability to internalize this feedback and institute actions to optimize clinical care. This review seeks to identify areas to improve patient and family satisfaction with the perioperative experience.