Preferences for Information and Self-care, Stress and Coping with Outpatient Surgery: A Descriptive Correlational Study

Abstract

Outpatient surgery is a rapidly growing phenomena in the health care field; however, little is known about the stressful aspects of the experience of how patients cope with this type of surgery. The purposes of this descriptive, correlational study were: to identify what aspects of the outpatient surgical experience are appraised as stressful and how patients cope with these stressful experiences, and to examine the influence of preferences for information and self care on stress and coping.

The study was based on the theory of stress and coping as proposed by Lazarus. Data were collected from a convenience sample of 69 subjects undergoing their first outpatient surgical experience. Data were collected by means of an interview, the Krantz Health Opinion Survey, the Spielberger State Anxiety Inventory, and the Revised Ways of Coping Check List.

Data were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Quantitative measures included descriptive statistics, Pearson product moment correlations, and analyses of variance. Major findings indicated that surgical outpatients had concerns common to all surgical patients and additional, specific concerns related to having surgery on an outpatient basis. The mean of the Spielberger State Anxiety Inventory indicated that the subjects were under considerable preoperative stress. The ways by which subjects coped with outpatient surgery were varied and more numerous than anticipated with a mean number of coping strategies of 31.82.

Preference for information was found to have a significant influence on preoperative stress; however, preference for self care was not influential. Neither preference for information nor self care was found to influence the proportion of problem focused coping. However, higher proportions of problem focused coping were found to be significantly related to lower levels of preoperative psychological stress. The effect of problem focused coping on preoperative stress became apparent only when examined as a proportion of the total coping effort.

Two significant and unanticipated findings were: the mean score for preference for information was found to be substantially lower in the present study than has been reported for other groups; and preference for information was significantly and negatively correlated with education.