The effect of peer education on pre- and post-operative anxiety in patients with spinal stenosis referred to selected hospitals of Iran University of Medical Sciences in 2020

Background: Today, there are various methods to deal with anxiety caused by surgery. Peer education through interpersonal interaction improves morale and thus reduces people's anxiety and also acts as a mediator between the patient and the medical staff. Materials and methods: A total of 60 patients were selected through simple sampling method and according to the inclusion criteria and randomly divided into two groups of intervention and control. After matching the peers, the training of the intervention group members who were on the surgical list was started by one of each peer under the supervision of the researcher. The control group also benefited from routine hospital training. Data collection tools included two questionnaires, including demographic information and Spielberger anxiety scale. Data were analyzed using SPSS24 software. Results: The results of independent t-test with a significance level of 0.05 showed that there was no significant difference between the mean of pre-training anxiety in the two groups (p= 0.82). Postoperative anxiety showed a significant difference between intervention and control groups (p<0.001). Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that peer education has a positive effect on reducing patients' anxiety. Health professionals are always looking for solutions to use and implement it to save time and costs of hospitalization and improve the quality of care services. Awareness of the importance and impact of peer education in reducing patients 'anxiety and the economics of this type of education provides the necessary conditions for the use of peers in reducing patients' problems.