Qualitative Study On The Psychological Experience Of Atrial Fibrillation Patients During Radiofrequency Ablation Guided By EnSite-NavX System

ObjectiveTo explore the psychological experience of the patients with AF during the course of radiofrequency ablation under the introduction of EnSite-NavX, to analyze their coping styles and the internal needs in operations, so as to make individualized nursing tactics and thereby improve the patients’ comfort and ensure the safety of the operations.MethodsThis research adopted the phenomenological research method of the qualitative study. According to the objective sampling methods, we selected12AF patients undergoing radiofrequency ablation under the introduction of EnSite-NavX from a provincial hospital. Through the semi-structured depth interview, we explored and recorded the true experiences of the patients undergoing operation, and finally10patients’ interview data got within our research. By Colaizzi content analysis method, the obtained data were rearranged and analyzed, and herein the experience-related subjects of the AF patients undergoing operations were distilled.ResultsFrom the experiences of AF patients undergoing radiofrequency ablation operation, four subjects were distilled:1. Subject1:The patients had various complicated emotional responses during the course of operations, including the preoperative expectations, the anxieties and fears from the beginning to end, shames and helplessness when exposing their private parts, and the relief when the operations were accomplished successfully.2. Subject2:The patients had many various body discomforts. In the comparative long operation process, patients endured many physiological discomforts: different levels of pains caused by puncture catheterization and catheter ablation, chest tightness and sweating owing to the change of the operation environment and the health, and some other discomforts caused by the operational processes or the patients’ wrong self-cognation.3. Subject3:The patients had adopted various ways to respond to the discomforts of the body and physiology during the course of operations, such as enforcing their willpower, active feedback, excessive exaggeration, self-adjustment, and self-distraction, etc. The selection of the coping styles of the patients was related to their cultural background, character, and vary a lot from individual to individual.4. Subject4:The patients had more requirements to the medical workers’ technical operation and service attitude during the course of operations, and expressed their satisfaction to the medical techniques of the hospital and gratefulness to the careful service of the nursing staff. In addition, most of the patients were eager to get more comfort and physiological support from the medical staff in operation. ConclusionsAF patients had various internal experiences during the course of radiofrequency ablation, great individual differences of the coping styles to different physiological and body discomforts, and their information needs and emotional supportive needs in operation vary from person to person. Nurses should attach more importance to the experiences of the patients in operation, take each patient as a unique, integral being, and based on the physiological, psychological and various social needs of the patients undergoing operation,make individualistic, humanized nursing measures, in operation, enforce human care, give timely physiological interference, including physiological support and help to the patients, and improve the patents’comfort degree as much as possible under the precondition that the operation is carried out smoothly.