Patients scheduled for admission to intensive care unit: satisfaction with the information and frame of mind.

Editor—From the time of diagnosis through to treatment patients and their family or primary caregivers may experience emotional stresses, such as anxiety. It is broadly recognized that preoperative anxiety experienced by patients can have a negative impact on their subsequent recovery. After surgery, some patients are admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU), an environment which is considered to have a negative psychological effect on patients. In this setting, patients can develop a number of psychological alterations which can even lead to prolonged hospital stay, may continue to cause distress for several months after the patient is discharged from hospital, and may even constitute a posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Information is a useful tool for facilitating the patient’s adaptation to the situation and the prevention of problems. However, although satisfaction with information seems to be the key aspect for the patient’s benefit, account must be taken of individual patients. That is, although the amount of information provided is effective for some individuals in diminishing their anxiety and facilitating their recovery, the same information may not be effective for other patients. We have carried out a survey-based descriptive study focused on assessing the degree of satisfaction and need for information, and the anxiety and depression levels, of a series of consecutive 158 patients whose elective surgical procedure includes an ICU stay in the Valencia General University Hospital, Valencia, Spain (CHGUV). All subjects were interviewed at the end of the pre-anaesthesia visit conducted by the anaesthetist. The results showed that patients showed significant levels of depression (mild, 28%; moderate, 8.3%; and severe, 3.2%) and anxiety (22.5% females). Patients had a medium level of satisfaction (mean1⁄46, SD1⁄42, min1⁄40, max1⁄410) with the information received at that time about the disease, surgery, anaesthesia, hospital stay, and recovery, whereas their need for information was higher (mean1⁄48, SD1⁄42, min1⁄40, max1⁄410). Subjects were assigned to two groups based on their satisfaction with information scores (high or low satisfaction), and statistical analysis were made to compare depression and anxiety between the groups. Patients grouped as having a low level of satisfaction with the information showed higher levels of depression (mild depression) than the high level of satisfaction patients (low satisfaction group: BDI1⁄410, SD1⁄48; high satisfaction group: BDI1⁄47; SD1⁄46; two-sided significance1⁄40.011), which shows the role of information as a variable involved in the patients’ mood, in terms of depression, but no significant differences were found in the level of anxiety. On the basis of these results, and previous literature, we argue that intervention for these patients should be considered in order to improve their psychological status and the recovery process, and to prevent the development of long-term problems, such as PTSD, by implementing the following two key aspects.