AORN journal
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Comparative Study
The impact of parental presence on parental anxiety and satisfaction.
Researchers used an experimental research design to vary the amount of parental presence during their children's anesthesia induction and recovery and measured the effect of parental presence on parental anxiety and satisfaction with care. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory was used to assess parental anxiety. ⋯ Overall satisfaction scores were high, with little variability and no significant differences between study groups. Parents and physicians and nursing staff members supported the practice of parental presence during children's anesthesia induction and immediate postoperative recovery period.
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Comparative Study Clinical Trial Controlled Clinical Trial
Effect of music on ambulatory surgery patients' preoperative anxiety.
The authors investigated music as a method to reduce ambulatory surgery patients' preoperative anxiety. They assigned 42 patients to either an experimental or a control group and compared the patients' vital signs and self-reports of anxiety, which were measured using the state portion of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. ⋯ Differences in experimental and control group patients' blood pressure measurements and respiratory rates approached significance. The authors suggest that perioperative nurses offer music as a viable option to reduce anxiety in ambulatory surgery patients who believe music is a method of relaxation.
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Many perioperative managers record operating room times (ORTs) and use average ORTs to facilitate scheduling of elective surgical procedures. A second statistic, the upper 95% prediction level (ie, 95% chance the next ORT will be less than the upper prediction level) can be calculated from previous ORTs and used in scheduling elective procedures. ⋯ Upper prediction levels can provide perioperative managers better knowledge than average ORTs to facilitate decision making during the scheduling of elective surgical procedures. This method can be used to find upper prediction levels for any desired measure of procedure duration (eg, surgeon, scheduled procedure-specific times).
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study Clinical Trial
Effect of continuously warmed i.v. fluids on intraoperative hypothermia.
The investigators examined the effect of infusing continuously warmed (ie, 37.0 degrees C [98.6 degrees F]) i.v. fluids in two groups of middle-aged female patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy procedures. They hypothesized that increasing i.v. fluid temperature during surgery would decrease patients' risk for hypothermia. ⋯ Analyses of covariance, with the first intraoperative temperature measurement treated as the covariate, revealed nonsignificant results at the P < .05 level. The results suggest that administering continuously warmed i.v. fluids intraoperatively has no significant effect on maintaining patients' body temperatures during short laparoscopic surgical procedures.