A New Concept in Nursing Care After Surgery: Kinesiophobia

Kinesiophobia refers to the negative emotions created by the possibility of a person’s previous injury and cognitive-behavioral avoidance behavior. Pain experience, biological, and psychosocial factors affect the patient’s developing the fear of movement. The patient may experience different levels of pain in the postoperative period depending on the type of surgery and incision. Interpretation of pain as painful and dangerous causes fear avoidance behavior during movement. The patient should be careful during the physical movement with protecting the wound, avoiding sudden movements, and stabilizing for affecting the healing process positively. In the postoperative period, the pain experienced while performing daily activities such as sleeping, breathing, and coughing in the fowler position strengthens the fear of movement negatively and the patient is anxious while performing physical activities such as walking, breathing, and coughing to avoid damaging the wound site and has difficulty in performing useful activities that contribute to the recovery in the postoperative period due to movement restriction; this may cause complications and adversely affect the healing process. Questioning the presence of kinesiophobia in postoperative nursing care, evaluating the fear of movement by using scales related to kinesiophobia in the clinic, determination and application of appropriate cognitive-behavioral therapy method with the patient in multidisciplinary cooperation, encouraging the patient in all these processes, and providing care by the nurse will contribute to the healing process.