Assessment of preoperative anxiety for patients awaiting surgery at UTHK

Abstract

Introduction Preoperative anxiety is common in patients awaiting surgery. Perioperative nurses are in good position to relieve preoperative anxiety. Therefore an assessment of preoperative anxiety and associated factors is a fundamental step for better management of anxious patients. Problem statement: The preoperative anxiety is still high and associated with poor surgical outcomes. However, the level of anxiety of patients waiting for surgery in Rwanda is not well documented, and at the best of researcher’s knowledge, there is no research done in Rwanda on that phenomenon and if nothing was done about this the number of patients who suffer anxiety related complications could continue to occur at high level, therefore this study assessed preoperative anxiety level and the associated factors for patients awaiting surgery at UTHK, Rwanda. The aim of this study is to assess the preoperative anxiety and the associated factors for patients awaiting surgery at UTHK. Methods: This study used a cross-sectional analytical study design. The population of this study was adult patients awaiting surgery at UTHK using a convenience sampling strategies. A sample size of 151 adult patients was used and PITI was used to assess for preoperative anxiety. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data and SPSS version 20 was used in the analysis. Results: The findings show that 72.8% had clinically significant preoperative anxiety level. Patients waited for orthopedic surgery are 10.22 times more likely to have clinically significant preoperative anxiety levels compared to patients waited for urology surgery (OR: 10.22; 95% CI 1.144 - 91.304; P= 0.037). The old patients had low preoperative anxiety levels compared to patients with young age (OR: 0.22; 95% CI 0.075 - 0.650; P=0.006). Conclusion: the results indicate that the overall participants had clinically significant preoperative anxiety level that was significantly associated with types of surgery medical diagnosis, and age.

Recommendation: elaboration of policy and procedure for management of preoperative anxiety and conducting research to explore predisposing factors of preoperative anxiety to patients who waited for orthopedic surgery.