Patient Perception Regarding Preoperative Information to Anxiety Towards Surgery

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Surgeries are seen as stressors that activate preoperative fear. Preparing the patients prior to surgery through preoperative instruction develop crucial to anxiety level. The objective of study is to evaluate the perception of patients regarding anxiety prior to surgery. METHODS: A total of 273 patients attending the outpatient department of Hospital were taken in the study. All the patients were aged 20-60 years. The anxiety was measured by means of different questions like fear of surgery, pain due to surgery, postoperative complication, preoperative information of surgery etc. Student's t-test, one-way ANOVA was performed to obtain the mean values of anxiety using SPSS 16.0 for Windows. RESULTS: It was found that all of the patients received preoperative information about the surgery to be done and most of them obtained information from doctors (27.6%), hospital management staff (24.3%), and nurses (22.5%). Fear of surgery (18.6%) and pain (17.4%) are most common factors among study participants. Significant results of anxiety was found with educational level and age(p=0.000). CONCLUSION: All the patients got information prior to the surgery and main source of information were doctors, hospital management staff and nurses. Mostly patients were anxious of surgery and postoperative pain. Still, health professionals should plan to deliver appropriate information to help patients against this fear.