The impact of preoperative fear on postoperative pain in patients undergoing elective surgery

In this study, it was aimed to determine the impact of preoperative fear levels of patients to undergo elective surgical intervention on postoperative pain. The target population of the study included 156 inpatients aged 18 years and older, who had undergone elective surgical intervention in the general surgery service of a medical faculty in the west of Turkey. In collection of the study data, The Personal Information Form, The Visual Comparison Scale and The Surgical Fear Scale were used. The data acquired were analyzed using the SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) for Windows 22.0 program. It was found that the data evaluated via The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test were not normally distributed. In the analysis, The Mann Whitney U test and The Kruskal Wallis Test were used. The value p<0.05 was accepted to be statistically significant. In the present study, it was found that mean age of the patients was 56.94±15.01 years and 50% of them were women. Preoperative surgical fear levels of the patients to undergo elective surgery were examined and it was found that their mean total Surgical Fear Scale (SFS) score was 17.62±17.62 and the patients had higher levels of postoperative pain within the first 30 minutes and second hour. In addition, it was determined that their Visual Comparison Scale scores varied according to sociodemographic characteristics. The correlation between The Surgical Fear Scale and The Visual Comparison Scale was examined and a statistically low significant correlation was found between the postoperative pain scores of the patients at minute 30 and hour two in a positive direction. As a result of the study, it was determined that the patients had higher levels of postoperative pain at early hours and their levels of preoperative fear increased according to their surgical experience and status of being single. Keywords: Surgical Nursing, Elective Surgery, Surgical Fear, Pain