Development and Validation of the Paediatric Scale for Quality of Recovery in the Post-Anaesthesia Care Unit

This project aims to address an important gap in paediatric postoperative care. Children recovering in the post-anaesthesia care unit (PACU) are commonly assessed using physiologic discharge-readiness criteria, which focus mainly on safety parameters such as consciousness, breathing, circulation, and readiness to leave PACU. Although these measures are essential for clinical decision-making, they do not fully capture the child's actual recovery experience, including symptoms such as pain, nausea or vomiting, distress, discomfort, tiredness, or poor behavioural recovery. As a result, two children may both meet discharge criteria yet have very different quality of recovery.

At present, there is no well-established child-centred questionnaire designed specifically to measure quality of recovery during the immediate PACU period. This project therefore aims to develop and test a new questionnaire that better reflects what matters to children, families, and clinicians during early recovery after anaesthesia and surgery.

The study will include children aged 2-17 years undergoing elective procedures requiring anaesthesia or sedation, with parent/caregiver proxy reporting used where appropriate for younger children. This is a multicentre collaboration. The Siriraj Hospital site will be involved in Step 1, the qualitative item-generation phase, and Step 4, the field-testing / survey administration phase. In Step 1, interviews with children, parents/caregivers, and clinicians will identify the most important aspects of recovery. In Step 4, the questionnaire will be tested in PACU and compared with routinely collected clinical indicators. The expected outcome is a practical, reliable, and child-centred PACU recovery measure for use in clinical care, quality improvement, and future research.

Inclusion criteria

• Children aged 8-17 years for self-report version
• Parents/caregivers of children aged 2-7 years for proxy-report version
• Elective surgery/procedure under anaesthesia
• Planned recovery in PACU
• ASA I-IV
• Able to communicate in the prespecified site language (Thai - in Siriraj Hospital site)
• Informed consent/assent obtained as applicable Exclusion criteria
• Unable to communicate in the prespecified site language (Thai - in Siriraj Hospital site)
• Urgent or emergency surgery/procedure
• Not planned to recover in PACU, including planned direct transfer from theatre to ICU
• Developmental delay or other condition limiting comprehension for interview participation or questionnaire completion
• Not available for an uninterrupted interview or questionnaire completion.