Assessment of anxiety among the in-patients of the department of General Surgery

INTRODUCTION:

Anxiety is a vexatious feeling that compromises the patient’s well-being and comfort.For assessing the intensity of preoperative and postoperative anxiety, different rating scales are considered. Before anaesthesia and surgery, questionnaires involving rating scales are popular means of recording patients & judgements of anxiety. To evaluate the treatment outcome in anxiety disorders, Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HAM-A) was the most commonly used semi-structured assessment scale.

OBJECTIVES:

• To assess anxiety among patients admitted to the General Surgery ward and have been

scheduled for a surgery.

• To find out the association between the anxiety in patients and demographic variables.

JUSTIFICATION FOR THE STUDY:

Anxiety is an unpleasant sensation which compromises the patient’s well-being and comfort. Preoperative anxiety comprises of both the fear of surgery and fear of anaesthesia. Hence, the detection of preoperative anxiety in patients undergoing an operation is very essential in order to be able to alleviate it.

METHODOLOGY:

The patient data collection form will be designed to collect information pertaining to the socio-demographic characteristics and surgery details of the patient. The Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale will be utilized to assess the severity of anxiety among the enrolled patients. The association of various socio- demographic variables with the patient’s status of anxiety will also be assessed.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS:

Data will be expressed in terms of descriptive statistics( frequency and percentage )

Association will be done using chi-square test or fishcer exact test

p- vale< 0.05 will be considered as statistically significant

Statistical analysis will be performed using SPSS software version 20.0

OUTCOME MEASURES AND WHETHER IT IS OF NATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE WITH RATIONALE:

The study is aimed to carry out effective assessment of the prevalence of anxiety among the patients admitted to the General Surgery department. At the culmination of the study, one will be able to shed light on the distress faced by these patients and highlight the urgent need to address it using suitable intervention in the future.