Can providing paging devices relieve waiting room anxiety?

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

* The average age of both groups was 48 years.

* The average duration of patients' surgeries was 174 to 199 minutes.

* Forty-two percent to 43% of individuals previously had waited at least once in surgical waiting rooms with the average subject reporting 3.3 to 4.0 surgical waiting room experiences.

* Approximately 18% of the sample was male.

* Thirty-one percent to 36% of the subjects lived with the surgical patients.

* Thirty-five percent to 40% had at least one surgery themselves, with the average subject reporting having 2.1 surgeries.

There was a similar distribution between the two groups with regard to the types of surgical procedures performed on patients:

* 14% to 17% of the surgeries were orthopedic,

* 19% to 24% were obstetric/gynecologic, and

* 10% to 14% were neurosurgery. No attempt was made to stratify the analysis by types of surgical procedures performed on patients because of the small cell sizes and diminished statistical power.

The second phase of the analysis examined relationships between the dependent variables of state anxiety, threat, and activity. Activity and percentage of time the subjects spent in surgical waiting rooms was unrelated to either their state anxiety (ie, r = -.11) or their total threat (ie, r = -.34) (Table 3). A significant positive relationship was found between state anxiety and total threat (ie, r = .64).

Table 3 CORRELATIONS BETWEEN ACTIVITY, STATE ANXIETY, AND PERCEIVED THREAT OF ENTIRE SAMPLE (N = 57)

Variable           Percentage of time       State Anxiety
                 spent in waiting room

State anxiety           -.11
Total threat            0.34                .64 (P < .01)

The third phase of the analysis evaluated differences between the two study groups on the outcome variables to address the research hypotheses. The ANOVA model was used to evaluate all of the research hypotheses. For each of these analyses, group assignment (ie, paging devices versus no paging devices) was the independent variable. The dependent variables were state anxiety, perception of threat, and percentage of time spent within surgical waiting rooms. The lack of significant demographic differences between the two groups indicated that neither of them should be included in the ANOVA equations as a covariant. The group that received paging devices spent a significantly lower percentage (ie, 65.2%) of the intraoperative period in surgical waiting rooms when compared to the group that did not receive paging devices (ie, 83%) (Table 4). The group that received paging devices also reported higher state anxiety during the intraoperative period. Both groups reported similar levels of threat during the intraoperative period.

Table 4 COMPARISON OF OUTCOME VARIABLES BETWEEN GROUPS

Variable                        Paging device (n = 29)
                        Mean [  or -] standard deviation (SD)

Percentage of time
spent in surgical
waiting room                      65.2 [  or -] 0.19
State anxiety                     46.1 [  or -] 13.3
Total threat                      61.9 [  or -] 23.3

Variable                  No paging device (n = 28)
                              Mean [  or -] SD
Percentage of time
spent in surgical
waiting room                 83.0 [  or -] 0,14
State anxiety                38.6 [  or -] 12.0
Total threat                 60.4 [  or -] 27.1

Variable                df    F-value      P
Percentage of time
spent in surgical
waiting room            55    -16.72      .00
State anxiety           55     4.92       .03
Total threat            55     0.04      0.85