The Effectiveness of Dramatic Puppet and Therapeutic Play in Anxiety Reduction in Children Undergoing Surgery: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Surgery as a stressful experience can affect the child and quality of care plan. Nurses can use non-pharmacological intervention to reduce anxiety and help children cope with this stress.
This study was designed to compare the effects of dramatic puppet and therapeutic play on anxiety of children undergoing surgery.
In this randomized clinical trial, 75 children were divided into three groups (dramatic puppet, therapeutic play, and control) using a simple random allocation method. The study was conducted in Iran in 2013 - 2014. The revised children’s manifest anxiety scale (RCMAS) was used to determine the anxiety of children. The data were analyzed using paired t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and Tukey test.
The findings revealed that the changes of anxiety scores after the intervention were significantly different among the three groups (P Therapeutic play and dramatic puppet can be used by nurses as a care strategy and effective preoperative preparation intervention to reduce anxiety in children undergoing surgery.