The Effects of Educational Video on Preoperative Anxiety Level among Surgical Patients of a Private Hospital

Abstract

Surgical patients usually demonstrate fear towards anaesthesia and surgery throughout the hospitalisation. The management and assessment of anxious surgical patients are considered challenging tasks and require constant attention and reassurance from healthcare providers. Preoperative patient education has been a gold standard of nursing practice to reduce patients' anxiety for the past few decades. The study aims to assess the effectiveness of preoperative educational videos in reducing the patient preoperative anxiety level. A quantitative, quasi-experimental research design was used, and a purposive sample of 152 participants was recruited and divided equally into intervention and control groups. The selection of patients fulfilled inclusion criteria of adult patients who undergo general anaesthesia or spinal anaesthesia with elective surgery and can read English or Malay. The researcher developed a validated preoperative educational video. The intervention group had access to preoperative educational video for the preoperative education, and the control group used the existing preoperative counselling checklist. Upon admission, both groups were assessed for preoperative anxiety level using the Amsterdam Preoperative Anxiety and Information Scale (APAIS) as a pre-test to record the baseline preoperative anxiety level. The same group of patients had a post-test rating of anxiety level before sending to the operation theatre. The researcher used descriptive and inferential statistics to analyse the result. Results revealed that 47.4% (72) patients experienced preoperative anxiety (M= 14.13). The female presented more anxiety (M=11.05) compared to the male patients (M=10.07). The patients showed their need for information (M=5.71). The study revealed that patients' preoperative anxiety levels reduced after the preoperative educational video. The provision of preoperative educational video can reduce the patient preoperative anxiety level. The enhancement of improvising the video to Multilanguage and extended to an application will benefit more patients.