Effect of exposure to a paediatric play area in the common pre-operative room on anxiety levels of adult patients undergoing elective surgery: a quasi-experimental study

Pre-operative anxiety is a natural and expected reaction in patients who are scheduled to undergo surgery. Although well described in literature, this aspect is often undiagnosed and undetected, with anxiolysis interventions only in those who manifest extreme symptoms, or those who express anxiety overtly to the physicians. Pre operative anxiety in adult patients has been found to be as high as 52%. Pharmacological and non-pharmacological techniques have been described in literature to decrease anxiety. At various institutes such as ours, there is a common adult and paediatric pre-operative holding area of the operation theatre. This offers a unique opportunity to set up a demarcated paediatric play area in this common area, where paediatric patients can play and interact with other paediatric patients. We intend to analyse the effect of this play area on adult patient’s anxiety levels, with the hypothesis that after implementing this quality improvement intervention the anxiety levels will be lower than pre intervention group of patients.