Public Awareness about the Anaesthesiology Profession: A Conference Survey of Campus People, Southwest Nigeria abstract
Introduction: There is little public awareness on the anaesthesiology professionamong the Nigerian population. This study aims to determine the level ofanaesthesiology profession awareness among the population of tertiary schoolstudents, academic and non-academic staff members who were attending aSouth-western Nigerian zonal conference.Methods: Data obtained from a cross-section of 2,748 students, academic andnon-academic staff members of various tertiary institutions in South-westernNigeria were used in this study. The study tool was a self-administeredanonymous questionnaire which obtained information on the participants’demographic profile and knowledge of the anaesthesiology profession. Dataanalysis was done using SPSS version 16 software.Results: The mean age of the 2,748 respondents was 22.6 years. Roughly half(48.4%) of them were males, 95.0% were singles, 85.7% were from the Yorubatribe, and 69.1% were students. Only 32.8% of the respondents were aware of theanaesthesiology profession, most of which (35.0%) were aware of the professionthrough reading books. Furthermore, the most popular anaesthesiologist’s serviceknown by them (i.e. those that were aware of the profession) was intraoperativeanalgesia (61.6%), while palliative care service was the least known (13.1%).Doctors were found to constitute one of the underutilised sources of informationabout this profession.Conclusion: The anaesthesiology profession is poorly known among literateNigerians; therefore, a serious public education is needed in this regard. If peopleare not well-informed about this profession, they will be at risk of falling intohands of unqualified personnel when they are in need of an anaesthesiologist.Furthermore, doctors need to pay more attention on making the public aware ofvarious medical specialties.