The Effect of Preoperative Nursing Visit on Anxiety and Pain Level of Patients After Surgery

In this study, a structured education program was created, the visiting nurse was ensured to be the nurse who is involved in the patient's surgery, and the levels of anxiety and pain were evaluated according to objective criteria in the postoperative period on the patient group planned for laparoscopic surgery.

The study was conducted with 135 patients, 72 in the experimental group and 63 in the control group. The website https://www.randomlists.com/random-letters was used during the randomization of the patients. The patients were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups according to their sequence numbers.

For the standardization of patient education, an education booklet was prepared in line with the literature, and the final version was prepared by consulting experts. The experimental group was educated by visits of the operating room nurse. The control group was educated by the service nurse. Data were collected with state-trait anxiety inventory and visual analog scale.

Visual analog scale (VAS)- The scale, which is used to evaluate the pain intensity, aims to explain the patient's pain in numbers. The scale requires the patient to score the pain as the absence of pain starting from 0 (zero) and unbearable pain to be evaluated over 10 (ten) points Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory - Anxiety inventory was developed by Spielberg et al. in 1970 and adapted into Turkish by Oner and Le Compte in 1977. This inventory is a four-degree Likert type scale ranging from "Almost never" to "Almost always". In the state anxiety scale, the individual evaluates how he/she feels "right now". The total score obtained from each scale varies between 20 and 80. A high score indicates a high anxiety level, a low score indicates a low anxiety level The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory was applied before the patient education and the State Anxiety Inventory after the education. The pain was monitored in accordance with the surgical patient follow-up protocol for 24 hours postoperatively, and the State Anxiety Inventory was applied again 24 hours after surgery.

Inclusion criteria

• Patients who were 18 years old and above
• who could speak Turkish and who were able to communicate
• underwent laparoscopic general surgery (such as laparoscopic cholecystectomy, colon, inguinal hernia, appendectomy, incisional hernia, sleeve gastrectomy) were included in the study.

Exclusion criteria

• Emergency and unplanned cases,
• patients transferred to the intensive care unit after surgery,
• patients with neurological or psychological problems were excluded from the research.