ARE PATIENTS WHO UNDERGO OPEN-ACCESS ENDOSCOPY MORE ANXIOUS ABOUT THEIR PROCEDURES THAN PATIENTS REFERRED FROM THE GI CLINIC

Objectives: Our academic hospital center operates an open access endos copy service that allows referring physicians to directly schedule pat ients for outpatient esophagogastroduodenoscopy and colonoscopy withou t having them first seen in the GI clinic. Although patients from the GI clinic have an opportunity to meet the endoscopist and discuss thei r procedures directly beforehand, patients who are scheduled to underg o endoscopy through our open access service receive only a brief telep hone call from a GI fellow or nurse that is made to screen for contrai ndications to the procedure and to give instructions. Our objective wa s to find out whether patients who used our open access service were m ore anxious about their procedures than those referred from the GI cli nic. Methods: On arrival to our endoscopy center, consecutive patients from the open access service (n = 142) and the GI clinic (n = 85) com pleted a questionnaire that included three measures of anxiety. After completion of the endoscopic procedure, the attending endoscopist rate d patient cooperation. Patients also completed a phone questionnaire o n the day after their procedures assessing their experience with endos copy. Results: We found no difference between patients from the open a ccess service and those from the GI clinic in any of the measures of p reprocedure anxiety, in scores measuring cooperation during procedures , or in patient ratings of their experience with endoscopy as assessed on the day after procedures. Conclusions: Patients who used our open access service were no more anxious about their procedures or less coo perative during them than patients first seen in the GI clinic. In bot h groups, procedure-related anxiety was decreased in patients who had previously undergone endoscopy.