Effects of Structured Preparation on Self-Care Behavior, Anxiety, and Readiness for Cardiac Catheterization in Patients with Coronary Artery Disease

Abstract

Cardiac catheterization is a highly accurate and safe procedure for diagnosing coronary artery disease. However, most patients experience anxiety and inadequate procedural preparedness prior to undergoing the procedure. This one-group pretest–posttest quasi-experimental study aimed to compare self-care behavior, anxiety, and procedural readiness before and after implementation of a structured preparation program. The sample consisted of 32 patients with coronary artery disease at the Cardiac Center, Phrae Hospital who were scheduled for cardiac catheterization at Lampang Regional Hospital. The structured preparation program comprised therapeutic relationship building, information delivery via video media and a patient handbook, telephone follow-up, and arrangement of required laboratory results. Data were collected using a self-care behavior assessment, an anxiety questionnaire and a cardiac catheterization readiness scale, and were analyzed using the paired t-test and Wilcoxon signed-rank test by p-value  0.05.

The results demonstrated that following the structured preparation program, participants showed statistically significant improvements in mean self-care behavior scores and mean cardiac catheterization readiness scores (p < .001), while mean anxiety scores decreased significantly (p < .001). These findings indicate that structured preparation programs was effective in promoting self-care behavior, reducing anxiety, and enhancing procedural readiness among patients with coronary artery disease scheduled for cardiac catheterization—particularly within a referral system context in which patients must travel to a tertiary care hospital for the procedure. Therefore, this program should be implemented as a practice guideline for preparing all patients scheduled for referral to another hospital for cardiac catheterization.