(Poster 174) Is Self-Efficacy Associated with Surgical Preparedness?

Objectives: Patients that are better prepared for surgery have better patient reported outcomes and less complications. Effective interventions to increase surgical preparedness are still lacking. Understanding independent patient factors that can affect surgical preparedness allow for the development of interventions that successfully increase surgical preparedness. Our objective was to determine if self-efficacy was associated with surgical preparedness.

Methods: We performed a prospective cross-sectional study on all English and Spanish-speaking women undergoing gynecologic surgery. Patients undergoing bladder Botox and periurethral bulking were excluded. Patients were enrolled after undergoing routine surgical counseling with their pelvic floor surgeon. Patient demographics, health literacy score, and prior surgical history, as well as several patient reported outcome measures were gathered pre-and post-operatively. General Self-Efficacy was determined using the General Self Efficacy Scale (GSE). Surgical preparedness was determined using the Surgical Preparedness Assessment (SPA). An association between self-efficacy and surgical preparedness was made by 1) comparing GSE between patients that were prepared versus not prepared for surgery; and 2) determining correlations between GSE scores and SPA sores. Prepared patients were defined as those that selected response 1 (strongly agree) on question 6 of the SPA. Not prepared was defined as patients that selected response 2-6. Varying demographic outcomes and pre/post patient reported outcomes were also compared between patients that were prepared versus no prepared.

Results: A total of 150 patients were enrolled in the study. Two patients had their surgeries cancelled. The mean age was 54.8 +/- 16.6 years and most were White (84.5%), non-Hispanic (68.2%), and spoke English (94.6%). The most common indication for surgery was stress urinary incontinence (26.4%). About a three-quarter (74.3%) of patients reported being prepared for surgery. The only significant difference between prepared vs not prepared for surgery was the history of prior abdominal/pelvic surgery (80% vs 63.2, p=0.05). There were no other differences in patient demographics or intra-and post-operative characteristics between the two groups. There was no significant difference in GSE scores between patients that were prepared versus not prepared for surgery (p=0.94). The correlation between GSE score and SPA score was a negative overall correlation (r=-0.10, p=0.22).

Conclusions: Self-efficacy is not an independent patient factor related to surgical preparedness. Further research is needed to determine if it is still one of the factors amongst other variable that contribute to surgical preparedness.