Can providing paging devices relieve waiting room anxiety?

AORN Journal, April, 1998 by Robert Topp, Eileen Walsh, Carol Sanford

METHODS

Individuals who arrived in surgical waiting rooms to wait for patients undergoing surgical orthopedic, obstetric/gynecologic, or neurosurgical procedures were approached to be subjects for this study. The physicians conducting these procedures previously provided permission to the investigators to approach these individuals. The purpose of the study was explained, followed by a brief description of the individuals' involvement in the study. Individuals interested in participating provided written consent before beginning the study. Individuals did not disclose their names or personal identification information on any of the data collection forms to maintain confidentiality.

A convenience sample of 57 subjects was recruited for the study and assigned sequentially to two groups between October 1996 and March 1997. This sequential assignment resulted in a nonequivalent control group designed to minimize cross-contamination between the study groups. The first 28 subjects who consented to participate between October and December 1996 were assigned to the routine waiting room procedure group. Subjects in this group received the usual surgical waiting room instructions and were told they would be notified of developments in their family members' progress by waiting room staff members.

After these first 28 subjects completed the study protocol, an additional 29 subjects were recruited for the study, using the same inclusion criteria, and placed in the experimental group between January and March 1997. Individuals in the experimental group were given digital pagers that could be activated while on hospital grounds. The subjects were instructed by project staff members on how to use the pagers, and a demonstration of how the pagers worked also was provided by the research assistant. The subjects were able to state that they understood how to use them and the circumstances under which they would be activated. Pagers were activated when the patients' conditions changed or when physicians wished to talk with subjects after or during surgical procedures. Subjects carrying pagers were instructed to call the surgical waiting rooms from hospital telephones when the digital pagers were activated. Telephone numbers of the surgical waiting rooms were printed on the digital pagers. The digital pagers were returned to project staff members in the waiting rooms after their respective surgical patients had been transferred to the postanesthesia care units (PACU).

Procedure. Data were collected from all subjects during the intraoperative and postoperative time periods (Table 1). Subjects in both the control and the experimental groups completed four instruments, including three self-report questionnaires and an activity log. Subjects began completing the activity logs when they had arrived in the surgical waiting rooms and the patients had been transferred to the OR. After the surgical patients were transferred to the PACU in the postoperative phase, the subjects completed the three remaining questionnaires. These questionnaires assessed their demographic characteristics, as well as their state anxiety and perceived threat during the intraoperative period. Comparisons were made between the subjects who carried digital pagers and the subjects who received routine waiting room procedures. These comparisons determined if subjects with digital pagers had any different anxiety, feelings of threat, or activity levels during the intraoperative period when compared to the subjects who did not receive pagers.