Objective: To study the effects of a computerized educational information program on anxiety of parents whose children were undergoing cardiac catheterization.
Material and Methods: This was a quasi-experimental study. The sample comprised parents of children who were admitted for cardiac catheterization at Songklanagarind Hospital during November 2005 to May 2006. They were selected by purposive sampling. Forty parents were assigned to either an experimental or a control group. Twenty parents in the experimental group received the computerized educational information program and those in the control group received conventional information. The parents’ anxiety in the experimental and control groups were compared pre-post receiving the information. The reliability of the State Anxiety (Form X-I) in this study was 0.83. The data were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and t-test. Statistical significance was set at p-value < 0.05.
Results: The mean anxiety scores at pre- and post-receiving information in the control group were not different, whereas the mean anxiety scores in the experimental group
post-receiving information were significantly decreased. The mean anxiety scores in the control and the experimental groups post-receiving information were significantly
different.
Conclusion: The computerized educational information program can reduce the anxiety of parents whose children are undergoing cardiac catheterization.