Introduction Patient comfort and safety are crucial aspects of fiberoptic bronchoscopy. This is usually performed under sedation and at times it is tricky to judge the degree of sedation and patient comfort during the procedure.

Methods We conducted a prospective survey to assess patients’ satisfaction with sedation and the overall experience during flexible bronchoscopy. This was a questionnaire based survey, wherein the patients’ completed a questionnaire within 48 hours after the procedure. We advised them not to complete the questionnaire on the same day of the procedure to avoid bias due to the effects of sedatives used during procedure. The questions were scored on a 5-point Likert scale. The questionnaire included satisfaction regarding the procedure, staff professionalism, the endoscopy suite, perception of adequacy of sedation, technical ability of the interventionalist, and post procedure care. Nursing staff were requested to record their perception of the degree of sedation and patient discomfort. Correlation between patients perception of discomfort/pain were compared with the staff perception.

Results 52 patients completed the questionnaire over a 3 month period. 33/52 (63.7%) experienced pain/discomfort during the procedure. 73.1% felt sufficient steps were taken to reduce the pain/discomfort. 46 (88.4%) of patients’ disclosed that they did not mind to have a repeat procedure if needed. While there was poor correlation between the protocol of sedation used and patient comfort, there was a significant correlation between the staff perception of adequacy of sedation with the patients perception (p = 0.0007).

Conclusion Regular patient surveys would give us an idea about the sedation practices we employ for bronchoscopy. As staffs perception significantly correlates with patients’ pain/discomfort this can be a valuable tool in judging the sedation requirements especially in a partly sedated patient.