St. Joseph Hospital Nurses Publish Article

Congratulations to Mary Gonzales, RN, MSN & Dana Rutledge, RN, PhD for their newly published article on pain and anxiety during IR procedures.  SJO employees have access to the full article through Burlew Medical Library.  Contact library staff for more details.

Pain and Anxiety During Less Invasive Interventional Radiology Procedures
Mary Gonzales, MSN, RN
Dana N. Rutledge, PhD, RN
Journal of Radiology Nursing
June 2015; 34(2) 88-93

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to describe patient-reported pre-, intra-, and postprocedure pain and anxiety levels for adults undergoing less invasive interventional radiology procedures. Most of the 53 outpatients were males, English speakers (91%), aged between 40 and 70 years, and having a chest port or arm port insertion procedure. Pain levels greater than 4 (0-10 scale) were experienced by a minority of participants (before, n = 1; during, n = 7; and after, n = 3). Many patients undergoing arm port and chest port insertions (22-68%) experienced some level of preprocedural anxiety. This is the first study to document the presence of pain and anxiety levels of outpatients receiving dialysis arteriovenous graft fistulogram or declotting procedures, chest port or arm port insertions, or tunneled dialysis catheter placements. Radiology nurses need to be aware of the pain and anxiety experiences of these patients and should be assessing and managing these in collaboration with their medical colleagues.