Perioperative communication and family members' perceived level of anxiety and satisfaction.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of periodic intraoperative communication between patients' waiting family members and the Operating Room (OR) nurse. The hypotheses were that the periodic updates would: 1) decrease perceived anxiety levels related to the surgical procedure; and 2) increase the overall satisfaction with the perioperative experience. In this convenience study participants were randomly assigned to either the "control group" (no periodic phone calls) or the "intervention group" (periodic intra-operative phone calls every two hours). Family member study participants completed both pre-operative and post-operative surveys. One hundred and seventeen (117) family member participants completed surveys (55=control group and 62= intervention group). The results of this study demonstrated that families receiving periodic updates from the OR circulating nurse experienced decreased anxiety levels (p = 0.002), perceived the experience to have been a "good experience" (p < 0.0001), and were more satisfied (p = 0.0002) than the families that received no updates.