2025 Volume 45 Issue 5 Pages 413-422
Anesthesiologists in Kanagawa Prefecture are unevenly distributed between the western and eastern parts of the prefecture. Since preoperative anesthesia explanation and obtaining informed consent(IC)for anesthesia are tasks outside the operating room, it is expected that in medical regions with a low number of full-time anesthesiologists per capita, the burden of obtaining IC may be significant. We administered a survey in hospitals in our prefecture to determine whether the burden of IC varies by region. Our findings demonstrated that the burden of IC increased under various circumstances, including when 1)the number of full-time anesthesiologists per population is low, 2)there are 5 or more days of elective surgeries scheduled per week, and 3)the annual case volume per full-time anesthesiologist is high. These circumstances likely reflect increased workload, highlighting the need to establish a system involving the government to address the uneven distribution of anesthesiologists in the prefecture.
