Information leaflets in nuclear medicine : are they necessary?

Abstract

The current trend in health care is to provide the patients with information, be it written, verbal or both, to educate them thus reducing some of the unnecessary anxiety that the patients feel. Patients attending the Gamma Camera Unit at St. Luke's Hospital are often anxious about the scan that they are about to undergo. One of the reasons for their anxiety stems from not knowing what is going to happen to them. The aim of this study was to determine whether the patients attending the Gamma Camera Unit would like to receive information about their examination, in the form of an information leaflet. Following this, the researcher also proposed to draw up an information leaflet based on the suggestions of the patients. No published studies were found pertaining to whether patients attending for a nuclear medicine scan wanted to receive an information leaflet. As a result, a structured interview was drawn up specifically for this research. Twenty-two patients were interviewed using this tool. The findings obtained from the respondents were then discussed within the thesis. The results obtained from this research revealed that all the patients included in this study, do in fact want information in the form of a leaflet. The data collected shows that there is a positive correlation between the need felt by the participants for information and the way they would feel if provided with an information leaflet. It was concluded that the patients attending for a scan would feel calmer if provided with such an information leaflet.