Effects of Nursing Interventions Applied to Surgery Patients: A Meta-analysis

Kim, Nam Cho; Song, Hae Hiang; Kim, Jae Ock

Abstract

A meta-analysis of 13 quasi-experimental studies was conducted to determine the effect of various nursing interventions applied to surgery patients. The studies were selected from dissertations done between 1982 to 1996 and had randomized or nonequivalent control groups in a pretest-post test design. The studies were classified according to three criteria : 1) types of surgery 2) types of nursing interventions 3) types of respondent variables. The following analysis was done : 1) Determination of usefulness of nursing interventions for surgery patients. 2) The magnitude of effect for each study was tested for different types of surgery, nursing interventions and outcome variables. 3) For a group of homogenious studies, the weighted mean effect size and standard error were estimated. Some findings are summarized as follows : Nursing interventions on relaxation effect applied to surgery patients have resulted in a significant effect size on pain, anxiety, and BP stabilization. Relaxation and music therapy were more effective on surgery patients than either education, heat therapy, or purposeful touch. It was impossible to identify which type of surgery was more effected by these interventions. On the basis of these findings, the following recommendations were made : 1) Many studies on the same kind of intervention applied to similar surgery patients should be accumulated continuously to identify factors that affect the effect size. 2) The detailed explanation of research process, such as, assignment method to experimental and control groups, starting points, duration and frequency of nursing interventions, and estimation of the outcome variables should be described in orther to be utilized for further research and practice.