A Study to Assess the Level of Anxiety of Patients Undergoing Abdominal Surgery at a Selected Hospital, Salem

Abstract

Background: Anxiety is a physiological state of alertness combined with an emotional state of fear, unease, and anxiety over potentially dangerous events. Surgery is a severe operation that carries a high risk of blood, discomfort, and morbidity or death. Pre-operative anxiety is, therefore, every day, with documented incidence rates ranging from 60 to 90 percent of patients undergoing surgery. Objectives: 1. to assess the anxiety level among patients undergoing surgery. 2. to associate the anxiety level with selected demographic variables. Methods: A descriptive research approach was adopted for the study. Patients undergoing surgery and admitted to selected hospitals made up the study population. Thirty patients were chosen from the surgical ward using a purposive sampling strategy. The Beck Anxiety Inventory Scale was used to gauge the degree of anxiety experienced by samples having surgery, and demographic information was gathered from the samples. Result: The result revealed that Out of 30 samples, 18 (60%) had severe anxiety, 8 (27%) had moderate anxiety, and 4 (13%) had a low level of anxiety. This depicts that most of the adults undergoing surgery had severe levels of anxiety.