The Preparation of Patients for Cardiac Surgery

Abstract

This study examines the impact of a preadmission telephone intervention on anxiety, knowledge, and readiness for discharge for patients attending a preadmission teaching program prior to cardiac surgery. The primary goal of the telephone intervention was to provide support by giving additional information about individual concerns. The telephone intervention did not have an effect on anxiety and knowledge. A significantly higher level of anxiety was found in the experimental group on admission, but this difference became nonsignificant when baseline level and length of waiting time were entered as covariates. The more anxious group rated their perceived knowledge level lower, despite the fact that both groups had similar scores in actual knowledge. Given the potential barrier that anxiety can pose for patient learning, nurses need to adapt their interventions to deal with the patients' feelings of anxiety that accompany cardiac surgery to make the learning process effective.

Including psychosocial factors in screening for surgery: A preliminary literature review from a social work perspective (Preprint)

“…That is, challenges such as poor psychological adjustment, depression, anxiety, perceived loss of control, reduced coping ability, or cognitive impairments, were variously linked with longer hospital stays, reduced response to treatment, poorer recovery, more complications, more treatments, more invasive interventions, greater pain, and higher readmission rates [13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. While the general indications from these publications reflect the potential importance of this topic, the specific nature of the links was not well defined in the literature reviewed.…”

“…It was also noted that surgery can take a psychological toll on families [22] and may have other social consequences, such as greater dependency on others [21]. Factors of social support, social wellbeing, past experiences, social vulnerability and consultation with family and extended networks, were all recognised as important factors affecting length of stay and outcomes [17,18,28].…”

“…The types of intervention described included, information provision and enhancing knowledge [16,34], providing psychological and social support [17,20,34], teaching and self-instruction approaches [23], as well as enhancing the link between the patient and doctor [18]. Strategies employed included telephone-based [5,17], as well as face to face interventions [34].…”

“…Reviewed articles pointed to the organisational and procedural benefit of screening to identify psychosocial issues such as anxiety [5,17]. Screening was linked with a number of positive outcomes including increased patient satisfaction [5,18], greater readiness for discharge, and increased knowledge about admission, surgery and recovery [17].…”

“…Screening was linked with a number of positive outcomes including increased patient satisfaction [5,18], greater readiness for discharge, and increased knowledge about admission, surgery and recovery [17]. Such outcomes assist in the surgical process and recovery, and keep the focus on patient centred care.…”