Public Awareness about The Anaesthesiology Profession: A Conference Survey Of Campus People, Southwest Nigeria

There exist very scanty literatures on public awareness on the anaesthesiology profession amongst the Nigerian populations. This study aims to determine the level of awareness of the anaesthesiology profession among a population of tertiary school students, academic and non-academic staff members who were attending a South-western Nigerian zonal conference.
Data obtained from a cross-section of 2,748 students, academic and non-academic staff members of various tertiary institutions in South-western Nigeria were used in this study. Study tool was a self-administered anonymous questionnaire which obtained information on the participants’ demographic profile and knowledge of the anaesthesiology profession. Data analysis was done using the SPSS version 16 software.
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 Yoruba tribe, and 69.1% were students. Only 32.8% of the respondents had heard of the anaesthesiology profession before, of which most of them (35.0%) got to know about the profession through reading of books. Furthermore, the most popular anaesthesiologist’s service known by them (i.e. those that were aware of the profession) was intraoperative analgesia (61.6%), while palliative care service was the least known (13.1%). Doctors were found to constitute one of the underutilised sources of information about this profession.
The anaesthesiology profession is poorly known among the literate Nigerian public; this calls for an imminent need for public education on this matter. If the members of the public are not well-informed about this profession, they will be at risk of falling into the hands of quacks when they need an anaesthesiologist’s care. Doctors also need to pay more attention to educating the public about various medical specialties.