Back on the theme of “academia catching up with what Consulting Hypnotists know,” I found a recent (2005) study out of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston interesting. It may also be of help to those of us who work with that important task of preparing clients for successful surgery.

Anyhow, what happened was that researchers in the Department of Radiology there monitored over 150 video interactions of patients with their health care providers during “internventonal radiological procedures.”

Having previously noted that patients are often prepared for procedural discomforts with descriptions of pain or undesirable experiences, the researchers were interested to understand the affect of hearing such statements on patients' pain and anxiety levels. They monitored interactions to note which patients either heard statements that described painful or undesirable experiences as a warning before they actually received such potentially noxious stimuli or as an expression of sympathy after having received them.

The researchers then recorded the patients' rating of pain and anxiety after the painful event.

Result: Warning the patient in terms of pain or undesirable experiences lead to them reporting experiencing both greater pain and anxiety. Sympathizing with patients in such terms after a painful event did not increase reported pain but did result in greater patient anxiety.

Thus, contrary to common belief in the medical field and elsewhere, warning or sympathizing using language that refers to negative experience does not make patients feel better and likely, will increase their discomfort. What the mind expects tends to be realized!

Conclusions: This research supports a) the need to educate, wherever practical, health care providers on the consequences of inappropriate communication to patients, and b) makes it fair to anticipate that preparing the patient/client with appropriate positive suggestions prior to and post surgery is likely to have a positive influence on their interpretation of this potentially painful and anxiety inducing experience.

Hope this is of interest to some of you,