The Effectiveness of Spiritual Therapy in Reducing the Anxiety Level of Preoperative Patients

Abstract

Pre-surgical anxiety is an anticipative response to an experience regarded by clients as a threat to their life and bodily integrity. Spiritual therapy is an alternative treatment used by the religious through prayer and dzikir. This study aims to determine the effectiveness of spiritual therapies on the level of patient anxiety in preoperative patients. This research used a pre-experiment with a post-test-only design. Fifty respondents were taken by total sampling and divided into two groups (intervention and control group); each group consisted of 25 patients. The research was conducted from September to October 2020 at the University of Muhammadiyah Malang hospital. The dependent variable was anxiety level, measured by SAS (Zung self-rating anxiety scale) questionnaire. The data were analyzed with Mann Whitney Test using SPSS software version 23. The intervention group had mild anxiety at 52%, while the control group had 80%. The statistical test obtained a p-value of 0.016 < 0.05 and an effect size of 0.34 (moderate). This means that there is a difference in anxiety levels between the two groups. Spiritual therapies can enhance emotional intelligence, interpret its condition, and be aware of anything in favor of Allah SWT to improve coping and lower the level of anxiety. The nurse may provide spiritual intervention to pre-surgery patients to reduce their level of anxiety. Keywords: anxiety, spiritual therapy, pre-operation, dzikir