Research Summary
Patients may suffer both physically and psychologically from medically induced injuries. Despite the fact that there is wealth of anecdotal data suggesting that patients who suffer adverse events in their care experience reduced wellbeing there is negligible empirical research on the psychosocial impact of medically induced incidents on patients. Early findings from surgery suggest a wide range of psychological outcomes related with the experience of surgical accidents such as higher levels of distress than people who had experienced serious accidents or bereavements, reported pain levels comparable, over a year after surgery, to untreated postoperative pain, and psychosocial adjustment worse than in patients with serious medical conditions. In this study we focus on surgical complications on the basis that complications in the operating room are often associated with profound consequences for patients (e.g. need for major reoperations, induced long-term disabilities, long hospital stay etc.). As well as identifying the association of surgical complications with patient wellbeing (i.e. quality of life, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress), we also aim to explore broader psychosocial predictors of such outcomes (i.e. coping strategies, social support, complication-related characteristics, institutional support). We believe that such findings will be highly informative for the design of interventions that could help patients and their families cope more effectively with the complications of surgery. To this end, we have designed a questionnaire aimed at surgical patients assessing the above-described concepts. Comparisons between surgical patients who experienced complications in their care and those who did not will allow us to quantify the psychological impact of surgical complications on patients as well as the importance of different predictor variables as outlined above. Administration of the questionnaire at different time-points after the patients