- Title
- Patient perceptions of potentially threatening interventions
- Creator
- Fakes, Kristy Lea
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Patients commonly undergo a range of potentially threatening medical interventions, including diagnostic and therapeutic medical procedures, tests and treatments. It is important that healthcare providers ensure patients are adequately prepared for what will happen before, during and after the intervention. However, most of the literature on anxiety and patient preparation for medical interventions has focussed on higher-risk procedures such as surgery, high-technology procedures such as Medical Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Computed Tomography (CT), or specific diseases such as cancer. The overall aim of the body of work presented in this thesis was to examine the measurement and self-reported experiences of preparation among patients with a broad range of medical conditions and undergoing a range of medical interventions. This thesis comprises four papers, including one systematic review article and three original research articles. A multi-method research approach was used and included a systematic review of the literature, and qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Data were collected from multiple sources, including patients undergoing medical imaging interventions, radiation therapy and surgery. A high prevalence of raised anxiety among patients prior to medical imaging interventions was identified, suggesting room for improvement in preparation. To identify the gaps in patients’ preparation, a psychometrically robust instrument measuring their experiences is required. Therefore, a systematic review of the characteristics and psychometric properties of existing instruments was conducted and identified the need for a new measure to assess patient preparation. Patient interviews were conducted to investigate experiences and preferences for preparation, and highlighted that patients perceived it was important to receive information on the practicalities of treatment and possible side-effects. A generic instrument to measure the adequacy of patients’ preparation for medical interventions (MiPrep) was subsequently developed and tested to address both the limitations of the existing instruments, and key themes from the qualitative interviews. Good evidence was found for the instrument’s validity, reliability, acceptability and feasibility. MiPrep could be used by both researchers and healthcare providers as a quality assessment and improvement tool for patient preparation. Future research should further investigate the psychometric properties of the MiPrep instrument, including the factor structure, in other populations (e.g. surgery). To maximise the clinical utility of the instrument, further work is needed to determine the most appropriate scoring method and to develop score interpretation guidelines.
- Subject
- medical interventions; patient preparation; patient anxiety; preparation for medical interventions; MiPrep; thesis by publication
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1397954
- Identifier
- uon:34376
- Rights
- Copyright 2019 Kristy Lea Fakes
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 14 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 90 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |