Effect of bibliotherapy on reducing anxiety among pre-operative patients in Gujarat, India

Abstract

Numerous studies have shown that patients can have preoperative anxiety in mild, moderate, or severe forms. A supplemental tool to a disease's clinical treatment is bibliotherapy. This approach includes the core ideas of cognitive behavioral therapy and offers exercises meant to assist readers in overcoming unpleasant emotions. Therefore, it is of interest to evaluate how well bibliotherapy reduced pre-operative patients' anxiety. For the experimental group (30) and control group (30), a sample of 60 preoperative patients who had been determined to have considerable levels of anxiety was chosen. The Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale is used to measure patient anxiety. Prior to surgery, bibliotherapy was given to the experimental group's sample twice daily for around 20 minutes. No intervention was given to the control group. The study's findings showed that the experimental group's mean percentage anxiety score at the pre-test was 80.10 percent, whereas the control group's mean percentage anxiety score was 85.66 percent. After the test, the experimental group's mean anxiety score was 50.66 percent, while the control group's mean anxiety score was 83.20 percent. It is evident that bibliotherapy was successful in lowering pre-operative patients' anxiety levels. Nurses can utilize this non-pharmacological technique to help patients feel less anxious about surgery and experience fewer post-operative problems.