Therapeutic Communication Training of the Stretcher Bearers on the Patient Anxiety (STRESSCOM)

Anxiety is a form of psychic and/or physical discomfort caused by the feeling of the imminence of a danger. It is a normal reaction of adaptation and defense face to a situation lived as hostile. It is a frequent perioperative manifestation. Patients who need an intervention are indeed 20% more anxious than the general population. The occurrence of this anxiety can have consequences for perioperative medical care influencing morbidity and mortality.

Pharmacological premedication initially prescribed in the 19th century to limit the adverse effects of general anesthesia is currently used to fight perioperative anxiety. However, its effects are now considered as controversial.

and non-drug techniques have been studied. They have the advantage of being inexpensive and causing little or no adverse effects.

Therapeutic communication can be defined as a relational technique that seeks to separate the patient from the surrounding reality to provide analgesia or anxiolysis through the suggestion of positive images with a chosen verbal and nonverbal approach.

The knowledge of communication techniques resulting from hypnosis by the healthcare team could therefore optimize patient medical care in terms of analgesia and the management of perioperative anxiety. Therapeutic communication training in the operating room is short and accessible to all members of the team regardless of their rank. This is a training provided internally by a certified practitioner in therapeutic hypnosis, aiming to give to the professionals knowledge to optimize the patient support. At the hospital (Groupement des Hôpitaux de l'Institut Catholique de Lille), several stretcher bearers have been trained in therapeutic communication and are already applying it routinely.

No study has yet investigated the impact of the use of therapeutic communication in the operating room to control the level of anxiety of patients.

This study is prospective, monocentric, comparative, double blind. Two groups of patients will be compared: In the first group patients will be accompanied to the operating room by a stretcher-bearer trained in therapeutic communication, in the second group patients will be accompanied by a stretcher bearer without this specific training.

Inclusion criteria

• Major patients
• Hospitalized in the ambulatory sector for endoscopic examination under general anesthesia (fibroscopy/colonoscopy/others)
• Able to answer anxiety questionnaires
• Able to walk to the operating room according to the usual practice (no motor disorder)
• Not presenting a psychiatric or cognitive disorder, or a non-paired hearing disorder that may interfere with therapeutic communication
• Being informed and not being opposed

Exclusion criteria

• Refusal to participate in the study
• Patients under guardianship
• Patient who received premedication before going down to the operating room (benzodiazepines, gabapentin, antihistamines)