The Effects of preoperative teaching on the fear/anxiety of selected patients

Abstract

The hypothesis of this research study was: Adult surgical patients who receive preoperative teaching based on adult learning principles will exhibit less fear/anxiety than patients who have had incidental preoperative teaching. The research employed a pretest - post test control group design. Twenty subjects admitted to a private hospital for Arthroscopy or Dilation and Curettage - Laparoscopy were randomly assigned to either an experimental or control group. Demographic data, subjective (State - Trait Anxiety Inventory) and objective (heart rate and blood pressure) data were obtained before and after structure preoperative teaching. The analysis of co-variance program of the Social Science Statistical Package was used to analysis the subjective and objective measures of fear/anxiety. The < .05 level of significance was selected to evaluate the findings. The data analysis indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups. Implications of the results of the study are discussed and recommendations given for future research.