The Effect of Education and Counseling on Reducing Pain and Anxiety in Women Undergoing Hysterosalpingography

Fertility and having a child is a significant experience for most individuals; however, many struggle to achieve pregnancy. Infertility is defined as the inability of a couple to conceive after 12 months of regular unprotected sexual intercourse or to carry a pregnancy to term. It is estimated that 10-15 % of the couples globally experience infertility. In Turkey, it is estimated that 10-20% of the couples are diagnosed with infertility. In the evaluation of infertile couples, hysterosalpingography (HSG) is a simple, safe, and minimally invasive radiologic procedure to visualize uterine cavity and tubes after contrast enhancement. HSG plays an important diagnostic role in finding the cause of infertility and in deciding the line of management. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of education and counseling on anxiety and pain before the treatment of women who will have HSG procedure with the diagnosis of infertility.

This randomized controlled study was conducted at Gulhane Training and Research Hospital, Obstetrics and Gynecology clinic between May 2016 and January 2017. Volunteer women undergoing HSG as part of infertility evaluation have been included. Participants were randomly assigned to the intervention or the control group using a computer-generated list. A data collection form including socio-demographic and obstetric characteristics such as age, educational status, duration of infertility, previous pregnancies, births, abortion/curettage numbers, Spielberger State Anxiety Scale and Visual Analog Scale scores was used for each patient. After obtaining written informed consent, the data collection form, Spielberger State Anxiety Scale and VAS scoring scale were applied to both groups by face to face interview during the day giving appointment for HSG. Immediately after the questionnaires were applied, the nurse gave individual education and counseling were giving by the nurse researcher to intervention group for 30 minutes. Participants in the control group received standard care (verbal information about procedure and a short written information about the procedure) and no intervention (education and counseling) was performed.The IBM SPSS (Statistical package for the Social Sciences) 22.0 package program was used to evaluate the data obtained in the study.