International Journal of Nursing

Preoperative Anxiety, Expectations and Challenges of Surgical Patients in a South Western State’s Hospitals, Nigeria
Olufemi Oyebanji OYEDIRAN1 RN, PhD, FWACN; Abiodun Tolulope ODESANMIRN2,BNSc; Joel Olayiwola FARONBI RN3, PhD; Emmanuel Olufemi AYANDIRAN4 RN, PhD; Iyanuoluwa Oreofe OJO RN5, PhD; Timothy Olatunji OLADOSU RN6, MSc

Abstract
This study investigated preoperative anxiety, expectations and challenges of surgical patients in selected hospitals in Osun State of Nigeria. Descriptive cross-sectional design was adopted for the study. Purposive sampling and census were used to select the respondents. Semi-structured questionnaire was adopted for data collection while data analysis was done using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences. Hypotheses were tested using logistic regression and correlation at level of significance of p< 0.05. Findings show that 58.9% of the respondents had high anxiety before surgery and more than two third ((78.3%) reported fear of unknown, 77.7% reported fear of death while 62.3% reported fear of surgical errors as their major challenges. Also, majority of respondents (92%) agreed that provision of clear information about surgery, nurses‘ communication with the surgical team (96.6%), and 97.7% reported involving them in decision about their treatment were their expectations from the surgical team. Also, there was a positive relationship between expectations of surgical patients and their challenges. Furthermore, results revealed that age above 50 years, nature of the surgery (emergency surgery) and occupation (retiree) were associated with preoperative anxiety. The study concluded that level of preoperative anxiety was high while age, nature of surgery and occupation were statistically significant for preoperative anxiety.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/ijn.v9n1a4