Personal control interventions: short- and long-term effects on surgical patients

A randomized 2 X 3 X 2 factorial design was used to evaluate the short- and long-term effects of interventions that provided different means of exerting personal control over postoperative experiences in a sample of 121 black and 47 white hysterectomy patients. One variable was the presence or absence of the description of the experience in concrete sensory terms; the second variable was instruction in a cognitive-coping strategy, instruction in a behavior-coping strategy, or no instruction; and the third variable was experimental or control information about the posthospital experience. There was support for the coping processes that concrete sensory information was expected to stimulate, but no significant effects on resumption of usual life activities as was expected. The behavioral-coping technique was associated with a reduction in pain medication. The cognitive-coping technique was associated with reports of better physical recovery during hospitalization, but longer hospitalization. Posthospitalization recovery data, collected 2, 4, and 12 weeks after discharge, showed a different pattern of effects for the interventions than observed during hospitalization.