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[Pre-surgical worries: an empirical study in the child and adolescent population]
Quiles Sebastián Mf1, F Méndez Carrillo, J Ortigosa Quiles
1Departamento de Personalidad, Evaluación y Tratamiento Psicológicos, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Murcia, Murcia.
Objective:
To analyze presurgical worries in children and adolescents and to examine differences according to gender and prior surgical experience.
Method:
The child sample included 1,311 subjects, aged 7-10 years old, and the (pre)adolescent sample included 1,488 subjects, aged 11-14 years old. The child sample filled in the child version of the Surgical worries Questionnaire (CPCI-N; Quiles, Ortigosa and Méndez, 1998), with 17 items and a three-point rating scale, and the adolescent sample filled in the adolescent version (CPCI-A, Quiles, Méndez and Ortigosa, 1998), with 22 items and a five-point rating scale. Student's t-test was carried out to analyze the main worries and an analysis of variance was used to examine the effect of gender.
Results:
Children's and adolescents' main worries concerned the surgical process, the negative results of surgery and the negative consequences of illness. However, the younger children showed other significant worries such as having a needle in the arm for a long time or separating from their parents. In both samples, girls and subjects without previous experience of surgery showed higher levels of pre-surgical worries.
Conclusions:
We discuss the implications of these results for the development of programs of psychological preparation for children and adolescents about to undergo surgery.