Identifying and assessing anxiety in pre-operative patients.

Increasing demands for hospitals to be more efficient mean that patients attending for an operation are generally admitted on the day of surgery. As a result, healthcare professionals have little time to talk to the patient to ascertain his or her wellbeing, to check for any signs of anxiety and ask whether the patient requires further information about the forthcoming procedure. Healthcare professionals should be encouraged to use appropriate interventions to identify and assess anxious patients. There are several instruments available to measure the patient's level of pre-operative anxiety. This article reviews the Amsterdam Preoperative Anxiety and Information Scale, which is easy for patients to complete and may help to identify which individuals need extra support.