Understanding preoperative anxiety in patients before elective surgical intervention

Abstract

Background: Understanding the preoperative fears and anxieties in patients who are planned for surgical procedure is of paramount importance. Objective: To know the preoperative levels of anxiety in patients who received versus who did not receive The World Health Organization (WHO) tool before undergoing elective surgical intervention. Materials and Methods: The present study was conducted in the departments of surgical disciplines of Narayana Medical College and Hospital, Nellore. For the project, a total of 100 (50 in each group) adult patients (>18 years and Results: Median age of all the participants was 49 years. Age, gender, and education status, both the groups were not statistically significant. Based on the analysis, it was found that in Group A, patients had slighter higher response score than that of Group B. However, mean difference between both the groups was not found to be statistically significant. Mean response score of individual question, between both the groups, were significantly different in half questions, while not significant in remaining half of the questions. Among six questions, statistically significant (P = 0.017) difference was found in anesthesia-related responses. While for procedure-related responses, difference in mean responses was not statistically significant (P = 0.331). Conclusion: Effective physician–patient communication is the key in establishing trust, resulting in delivering a satisfactory care to the patient. There is a need to carry out further studies with an inclusion of a larger number of participants with a more precise tool to impart the knowledge about the surgical intervention and to ameliorate the peri-operative anxiety in patients who are undergoing surgical intervention. The following core competencies are addressed in this article: Patient care, Communication skills, Practice based learning and improvement.