The Experience of Loneliness Among Patients During the Perioperative Period

The experience of illness and hospitalization exerts a great deal of psychological distress, one of the most distressful events people might experience throughout their life times. Surgery and anesthesia with their accompanying loss of control, fear of being unconscious and invaded, and expectation of postoperative pain adds appreciably to that stress and anxiety. Current psycho-physiological research has provided evidence on the alarming possibility of the aversive affects of hospitalization stress on the patients' already deteriorated physical health and marked interference with their recovery. As an additional stressor, which may partly be related to the hospital staff, and partly to the person's illness and expected surgery is loneliness. Loneliness is a painful experience that is, commonly, not embraced and which has consequences that are detrimental to one's emotional, physical and spiritual well being. The present study explores the qualitative aspects of loneliness (via questionnaires) in two patient populations: (1) patients facing surgery, and (2) patients who have already undergone surgery. In addition, family members \[i.e. those waiting outside of the operating room\] will be given a questionnaire, and these three groups will be compared to the general population.