Anxiety During Stressful Medical Procedures Flashcards
What is anxiety?
- Unpleasant feeling or emotion
- Associated with:
- Threatening situations OR
- Thoughts of threatening situations
What does anxiety provoke?
Range of physiological, emotional and cognitive symptoms
What are the main examples of medical procedures that cause anxiety?
- surgery
- chemotherapy
- radiotherapy
- diagnostic tests (endoscopy)
- predictive tests (genetic testing)
Different procedures cause…
different stresses
What are the main types of stress associated with medical procedures?
- Procedural stress
- Outcome stress
What are patients anxious about?
- Anaesthesia/being unconscious
- Fear of waking during surgery
- Pain (e.g. post-operative)
- Life threatening procedures
- Post-operative outcome
- Possibility of disfigurement
- Threat of severe illness
- Outcome of test results
- Unfamiliarity of surroundings
- The ward environment
- Surrounded by machines
- Physical reaction
- Loss of independence
- Being away from home (children, job, obligations)
Why do medical procedures cause anxiety?
Medical procedures are inherently threatening as they involve a huge amount of UNCERTAINITY
Describe anxiety before and after medical procedures
- Most surgical patients experience high anxiety when they are admitted to the hospital
- Anxiety remains quite high before and after the operation
What is more likely in patients with pre-operative anxiety?
- Experience more pain post-operatively
- Use more analgesic
- Stay in the hospital longer
- Experience more complications
- Anxiety and depression after surgery
What three areas does patient anxiety impact on?
- Communication
- Adherence
- Pain management
What are the main methods used to help patients with anxiety surrounding medical procedures?
- Procedural information
- Behavioural instruction
- Cognitive coping
- Sensory information
- Modelling
- Counselling
What is procedural information?
- Giving patients information about the procedures they will undergo
- This involves patients being formed:
- When the procedure will happen and where they will be
- E.g. they might be told about the possibility of a catheter and waking up in a recovery room
What is the main way to minimise anxiety?
What is sensory information?
- Giving patients information about sensations they will experience
- E.g. They might be told that premedication will not necessarily make them feel drowsy; how it will feel when the anaesthetics are given
- What do you tell the patients before you but the needle in?
What is cognitive coping?
- Encouraging more adaptive/helpful thoughts (‘cognitions’)
- Teaching methods of reinterpreting apparent threats in a more positive light, using distraction or other techniques that has been previously useful in anxiety provoking situations and using these before and after surgery
