Title : Patient’s anxiety: A challenge
Abstract:
Objective: to estimate level of anxiety of patients admitted to the Observation Unit.
Method: It is an observational, descriptive and cross-sectional study that was performed to 212 unscheduled inpatients, for six and twenty four hours and whose age was comprised between 18 and 80 years, who were interviewed. Approved questionnaire that follows the “Likert scale” was used and it has been developed based on Volicer and Bohanon ??Scale of hospital Stressors .
Results: 212 unscheduled inpatients; 129 were men and 83 were women. 40% had internal medicine patology. 84% knew their disease, 87% knew the results of the tests and 35% thought that they had serious disease. 67% did not know when they could go to home and 91% of them entered the hospital suddenly , these are events that produce high levels of anxiety.
Conclusions: The inpatients admitted to the observation unit, coronary pathology generates the highest level of anxiety. Pain is the greatest stressor in hospital, possible consequences of the illness and a lack of information about it. On the other hand, the difficulties associated to hospitalization are events that produce lower levels of anxiety.
Audience Take Away:
- Training nurses so that they know how to help people in such difficult situations in life as the diagnosis of a serious illness.
- Teaching that hospital stressors generate higher levels of anxiety and less level.
- Deepenig the concept of anxiety, differentiating it from stress and fear.
- Training nurses to treat the anxiety when the patient come the Emergency Service, from this decrease the number of unnecessary visits to the Emergency Department, hospital stays are shorter, in conclussion to improve the quality of care
