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ECONOMICS AND HEALTH SYSTEMS RESEARCH

The Impact of Business Cards on Physician Recognition After General Anesthesia

Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine and *Department of PsychiatryThe Leopold Franzens University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

Address correspondence and reprint requests to A. Benzer, MD, Professor, DEAA, Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine, The Leopold Franzens University of Innsbruck, A-6020 Innsbruck, Anichstr. 35, Austria. Address e-mail to arnulf.benzer{at}uibk.ac.at

Despite their contribution to overall perioperative treatment of patients, anesthesiologists often remain in anonymity. We evaluated the impact of business cards on physician recognition after general anesthesia. Using a questionnaire, 441 patients were interviewed for recall of the anesthesiologist’s name, the surgeon’s name, and their overall satisfaction with anesthetic care 6 wk after undergoing surgery during general anesthesia. Of these patients, 155 had and 137 had not randomly received a business card during the preoperative visit, with another 149 patients serving as a control group. Business card recipients responded significantly more frequently than did nonrecipients or patients from the control group (65.8% vs 54.7% vs 53%), with recall of the anesthesiologist’s name being significantly more frequent in the Business Card Recipient group (51.5% vs 14.3% vs 11.4%). Patient satisfaction with anesthetic care and recall of the surgeon’s name were similar in all groups. The use of a simple tool such as a business card can indeed produce a measurable positive change in physician recognition on the part of the patient.

IMPLICATIONS: Anesthesiologists often remain anonymous in everyday clinical practice. Handing a business card to the patient during the preoperative visit increased the postoperative recall of the anesthesiolgist’s name from 11% to 51%.

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Anesthesia & Analgesia® is published for the International Anesthesia Research Society® by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins with the assistance of Stanford University Libraries' HighWire Press®. Copyright 2006 by the International Anesthesia Research Society. Online ISSN: 1526-7598   Print ISSN: 0003-2999