RECOVERY ROOM BEHAVIOR AND POSTOPERATIVE CONVALESCENCE

To test the usefulness of immediate postoperative behavior observations as predictive indicators of surgical convalescence in the hospital, the behavior of 60 general surgical patients was observed and systematically recorded as they recovered from anesthesia in the recovery room. On the surgical wards, they were interviewed every other day until their discharge about physical, social, and emotional aspects of their convalescence. Patients who gave a relatively high number of negative responses to recovery room stimuli showed less favorable postoperative adjustment than did patients with a low number of negative responses. No other measures of recovery room behavior showed a correlation with surgical convalescence at statistically significant levels. The measure of postoperative adjustment based on patient interview data correlated strongly with both medical indexes of recovery and nurse evaluation reports of patient recovery.