Perspectives of children, parents and health care providers on outcomes following anesthesia for surgery:: An international mixed methods stakeholder engagement study from the Pediatric Perioperative Outcomes Group.

Our international collaboration of researchers and clinicians (The Pediatric Perioperative Outcomes Group) was established to develop core outcome sets for infants, children, and adolescents. Here we report on a qualitative mixed methods study with semi-structured interviews of parents/guardians and their children undergoing anesthesia for surgery along with perioperative health care providers (e.g., nurses, surgeons and anesthesiologists). We compared and explored outcomes through a modified grounded theory analysis of interview transcripts to inform the establishment of an internationally recognized core outcome set for pediatric perioperative medicine. In total, 359 semi-structured interviews were conducted between June 2021 and July 2022 across ten study sites in 8 countries: USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, South Africa, Colombia and China. We identified the themes of pain, complications, mental health and emotional state, and environment to be important for all stakeholder groups engaged. Differences were observed between the themes for health care providers and patients, parent/guardians.