The influence of the timing of preparation on the anxiety of preschool children experiencing surgery.

Abstract

A quasi-experimental design with two groups of preschool children was used to determine if surgical preparation offered at two different time periods would result in different levels of state anxiety and posthospital behavioral upset. Twenty-three children (3 to 6 years of age) were studied. The children in one group were prepared the afternoon before surgery, and the children in the other group were prepared the morning of surgery. The same surgical preparation program was given to all the children by the principal investigator. The state anxiety level of each child was assessed at six time points during the ambulatory surgical experience. The posthospital behavioral upset of each child was also measured. The parent of each child responded to a 27-item questionnaire one week after discharge. Analysis of the observation and questionnaire data indicated that the children who were prepared the afternoon before surgery did not differ significantly in state anxiety or posthospital behavioral upset from the children who were prepared the morning of surgery. Also, the levels of anxiety of the children in the two preparation groups did not vary significantly with the type of surgery. The state anxiety mean score of the children in the morning preparation group at each time point was lower than the mean score of the children in the afternoon preparation group at each time point. Replication of the study with a larger sample size is recommended.