Abstract:
Background: Any drug given before anesthesia is called premedication. Premedication is used to prepare the patient
for anesthesia and provide optimal conditions for surgery. Generally, anesthetists administer a standardized
preoperative pre medications to improve the quality of patient outcome. The aim of this study was to audit the
patterns of the practice of pre medications before anesthesia/surgery.
Methods: For this retrospective study a sample of 30 patients, who underwent surgery under general anesthesia
during January 20 to 26/2020 were included. The information obtained from the standardized premedication form
in each patient’s file and interviewing the responsible anesthetists was audited using a self-generated checklist, based
on the measures and criteria incorporated in the different literatures or sources. The data were entered and analyzed
with Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.
Results: Although 100% of files retrieved contained the premedication form, none of these forms were fully
completed according to the study checklist used. The result showed that out of 30 patients, twenty five (83.3%)
patients did not receive pharmacologic anxiolytics (diazepam) followed by twenty two (73.3%) vagolytics (atropine)
pre medications. Among the sampled patients, twenty four (80%) of patients pre medicated with both anti-emetics
(metoclopramide) and anti-acid (cimetidine) and 23 (76.7%) pre medicated with dexamethasone (post-operative
nausea vomiting prophylaxis).
Conclusions: The practice of preoperative pre medications were incomplete with regard to a number of criteria.
Training and evaluation regarding administration of pre medications for patients
