Background and Purpose: Every patient experiences a nervous period of waiting before a surgical operation. We make a point of visiting patients for friendly chats with them before the day of Jurgery to reduce their anxieties. This study was conducted to evaluate the results of the preoperative visits to mentally support the patients and rapidly obtain their confidences by a method of “transactional analysis.”
Methods: Fourteen nurses of the operating section in our hospital visited 120 patients prior to surgical operations requiring general anesthesia between March and May in 1994, and recorded the communications for “transactional analysis.”
Results: The communications were completely documented in 21 out of 120 patients. The preoperative visit and communications reduced the anxieties in 18 out of the 21 patients (86%).
Conclusions: The preoperative visit and cummunications were useful for establishing confidences between nurses and approximately 90 percentage of the patients.