Self-Affirmation for Managing Anxiety and Perceived Discomfort in Open-Heart Surgery

Each participant of the intervention group was given a set of earphones and an MP3 player which included an audio recording with a background sound of birds crowing and river-like flowing water together with the positive affirmation sentences. The self-affirmation sentences were created by the first author by paying special attention to not using negative predicates and words with negative meanings such as pain, nausea, and discomfort. In the audio recording, the affirmative sentences were verbalized by the first author with a soothing voice. Between each sentence, a pause is given so that the patient can repeat each sentence verbally or internally. The audio recording lasted 5 minutes 40 seconds and the patients were asked to listen to it at least once a day, however, they were encouraged to listen to it as much as they wanted.