The Effectiveness of Interventions Aimed at Reducing Anxiety in Health Care Waiting Spaces
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Reducing waiting anxiety is an important objective of patient-centered care. Anxiety is linked to negative health outcomes, including longer recovery periods, lowered pain thresholds, and for children in particular, resistance to treatment, nightmares, and separation anxiety. The goals of this study were (1) to systematically review published research aimed at reducing preprocedural waiting anxiety, and (2) to provide directions for future research and development of strategies to manage preprocedural waiting anxiety in health care environments. METHODS: We performed a systematic review of the literature via ISI Web of Knowledge, PubMed, PsycINFO, EMBASE, CINAHL, and Medline. Included in this review were studies describing measurable outcomes in response to interventions specifically intended to improve the waiting experience of patients in health care settings. Primary outcomes of interest were stress and anxiety. Exclusion criteria included (a) studies aimed at reducing wait times and management of waiting lists only, (b) waiting in non-health care settings, (c) design of health care facilities with nonspecific strategies pertaining to waiting spaces, (d) strategies to reduce pain or anxiety during the course of medical procedures, and (e) interventions such as massage, acupuncture, or hypnosis that require dedicated staff and/or private waiting environments to administer. RESULTS: We identified 8690 studies. Forty-one articles met the inclusion criteria. In adult populations, 33 studies were identified, wherein the effects of music (n = 25), aromatherapy (n = 6), and interior design features (n = 2) were examined. Eight pediatric studies were identified investigating play opportunities (n = 2), media distractions (n = 2), combined play opportunities and media distractions (n = 3), and music (n = 1). Based on results from 1129 adult participants in the 14 studies that evaluated music and permitted meta-analysis, patients who listened to music before a medical procedure exhibited a lowered-state anxiety (-5.1 ± 0.53 points on the State Trait Anxiety Scale) than those who received standard care. The efficacy of aromatherapy was inconclusive. Studies reporting on the impact of improved interior design of waiting areas, while positive, are minimal and heterogeneous. For children, insufficient evidence is available to corroborate the effectiveness of play opportunities, media distractions, and music for mitigating anxiety in children awaiting medical procedures. CONCLUSIONS: Music is a well-established means of decreasing anxiety in adult patients awaiting medical interventions. The effect of music on children's anxiety is not known. Limited studies and heterogeneity of interventions and methods in the areas of aromatherapy, interior design, digital media, and play opportunities (for children) suggest the need for future research.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.034 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".