The effect of psycho-educational intervention on the level of preoperative anxiety of parents and children candidates for surgery in the Tabriz Children's Hospital

Abstract

Background: Hospitalization is a potentially stressful event for a child. Many children who undergo surgery experience significant anxiety and general anesthesia can cause a terrifying experience for these children which could involve surgeons, pediatricians, anesthesiologists, the staff and parents. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility of implemeting a psycho-educational intervention to reduce level of preoperative anxiety amongst parents and their children who are candidates for the surgery in the Tabriz Children's Hospital. Methods: This semi-experiental field trial was conducted on 159 children aged 3 to 12 years who were candidate for surgery in the Tabriz Children's Educational and Medical Center. Patients were randomly allocated to two groups of intervention and control with 80 pateints in cntrol group and 79 patient in interventional group. One day before surgery, random allocation of patients into two groups was made using the prepared list of the patients for next day surgery and after cheking for the study inclusion and exclusion criteria. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test normal distribution of the quantitative data and SPSS 25 software was used to further analyze the study data at a significance level of 0.05. Results: Based on the results of data analysis, the mean difference (intervention group) for parents was 3.968 and for children (intervention group) was 2.386. Therefore, considering the significance level less than 0.05 and with 0.95 confidence, it can be concluded that educating the parents of children candidates for surgery about the place of admission and the environment inside the operating room reduces preoperative anxiety in parents and children, before and after Has been effective since the intervention. The numerical value of F statistic shows the effect of the independent variable (group), (55/117) is significant. Because its significance level (p = 0.001) is smaller than the error value of 0.05 and this shows that the control group and the intervention are different after the effect of educational intervention. Conclusion: The results of this study showed that the effect of a pre-surgery psycho-educational intervention has a significant effect on controlling and reducing anxiety in patients.