American Journal of Advances in Nursing Research

Preoperational anxiety is a universal reaction experienced by patients who are admitted to the hospital for surgery. No matter how major or minor an operation is, it tends to a degree of anxiety to every patient. We sought to investigate the effect of preoperative teaching in reducing preoperative anxiety among cardiac surgical patients. A total of 60 cardiac surgical patients were selected and underwent quasi experimental study (one group pre test and post test design). Pre test was conducted by using State Trait Anxiety inventory followed by preoperative teaching on the reduction of anxiety levels on the first day to the patients. On 7 th day postoperatively post test was conducted to the patients by using same questionnaire. Data was analyzed by using‘t’ test, chi square and one way ANOVA. The results indicate that majority was females (68.3%), between the age group of 41-50 years (45%) and mostly belongs to semi urban areas (53.3%) and the obtained pre and post mean scores of the patients were 62.43+ 4.47 and 27.12+3.88 and the‘t’ value obtained was 51.55 (p<0.01) which indicates that there is significant difference between pre and post anxiety levels after preoperative teaching. Preoperative teaching was effective in reducing anxiety levels of the patients undergoing cardiac surgery and the patients can follow the relieving measures like meditation, yoga, regular exercises, eating healthy diet and having enough sleep in their daily life to recover soon and to improve their quality of life.