Effectiveness of Art Therapy on Pain Perception among Post-Operative Patients in Orthopedic wards of Selected Hospitals, UAE

Abstract

Art therapy the essence of psychotherapy enables to reduce patient’s suffering from pain sensation by focusing the way the patient perceives the current situation; pain relieved as well along the way. The aim of the study was to assess the effectiveness of art therapy on pain perception among postoperative orthopedic patients and to find association between pain perception scores of postoperative patient with their selected demographic and clinical variables.Pre-experimental research design among 50 orthopedic post-operative selected using consecutive sampling technique. Demographic data, clinical data and pain scores assessed using numeric pain scale before and after the art therapy for three consecutive days. Majority (70%) of the participants were males. About 62% were married and 42% had primary level of education. Majority (32%) had road traffic accident and 28% meet with work site injuries. On day-1 pre-art most of the patients (52%) experienced moderate to severe pain (28%), on day-2 and day-3, they experienced mild (44%) to moderate (42%) level of pain. After an hour of the art therapy, pain assessment on day-1, the patients had mild (38%) to moderate (34%), while on day-2, majority (72%) experienced mild pain and 26% had moderate pain. On day-3, the pain was verbalized to be with mild (78%) to moderate (22%). Art therapy was effective in reducing pain (p=0.000) Variables like age, gender, educational level and nationality were noted to be significantly associated with the pain scores along with diabetes, hypertension, and type of injury. Art therapy is beneficial hence be utilized effectively by nurses to help alleviate pain among post- operative orthopedic patients.