R. Wright1, C. Mueller1 1Stanford University,Surgery,Palo Alto, CA, USA
Introduction:
To understand what thoughts about healthcare lie in the minds of patients would be of tremendous benefit to treating physicians. For surgeons, a knowledge of patient concerns in the pre-operative period can be of especial relevance, as that would facilitate communication specifically designed to address these individual interests. In our study, we aimed to examine parental understanding of pediatric surgical procedures as well as parents’ questions and concerns before surgery.
Methods:
100 parents were approached during a pre-operative visit to Pediatric Surgery clinic. After being seen by an attending surgeon, participants were given a paper-and-pencil survey aimed at assessing their preoperative questions and concerns.
Results:
Parents were generally very accurate in their description of the upcoming procedure (97%) and the benefits to be gained (93%). However, 89% of parents reported have residual questions at the end of their clinic visit. The majority of these questions focused on issues of safety and post-operative recovery. In terms of additional fears/concerns, parents focused on pain (14%), anesthesia (12%), post-operative activities (11%), and patient anxiety (10%). Interestingly, most parents seemed relatively uninterested in issues of cosmesis, with only 8% of questions aimed at this aspect of care. Further, parents were neutral in their ratings of all aspects of surgical scars: potential appearance (mean = 3.02, SD 1.81), length (mean = 3.00, SD 1.88), width (mean = 3.01, SD 1.81), location (mean 3.00, SD = 1.80). No significant differences were found based on gender or age of children or parents.
Conclusion:
In spite of thorough conversations conducted by attending pediatric surgeons, the majority of parents whose children face elective surgery have a variety of unresolved concerns when they leave their initial clinic visit. We have been able to identify several categories into which these questions fall, notably safety and post-operative logistics. Rather surprisingly, questions about cosmesis or scar appearance were infrequent and seemed to carry less weight than might be assumed by many surgeons. We suggest that surgeons take into account these findings in order to better target patient conversations in the clinic setting and thereby potentially decrease pre-operative anxieties.