Abstract

Background: Counselling is the psychological aspect and an adequate and sympathetic communication with the patient. It consists in making more comprehensible to the patient his situation and to facilitate him to manage it with the greatest possible autonomy.

Purpose: The purpose of our study was to evaluate the effect of the pre-operative nursing counselling in anxiety management, particularly among patients undergoing mutilating surgery.

Methods: We selected 80 patients, 43 males and 37 females, who were scheduled for either a radical colorectal or breast cancer surgery. We used a two groups comparative design with an intervention group and a control group. STAI-Y1 test was administered to both groups. We used it to evaluate the pre- and post-operative anxiety and to evaluate the effect of the counseling intervention.

Result:We calculated the preoperative and postoperative STAI-Y1 test average score for each group. There was a reduction of postoperative average score compared to preoperative one in both groups. In the intervention group, that received nursing counselling, the reduction of the postoperative average score is greater than in the control group.

Conclusion: The analysis of our data shows that nursing counselling has a very important role to reduce anxiety in the surgical patient. We hope that counselling will be a teaching subject during the nursing degree curriculum. Further studies are needed to confirm our data.

Keywords: Counselling; Anxiety; Nursing; Surgery