Post Traumatic Stress Disorder among Patients with Orthopedic Injury

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a disorder that some people develop after seeing or living through an event that caused or threatened serious harm or death which is usually characterized by re experiencing, avoidance and numbing, and hyper arousal. Orthopedic injury mainly caused by motor vehicle accidents is considered as one of the important factor for the development of PTSD. Objectives The purpose of the study is to identify the prevalence of post traumatic stress disorder among patients with orthopedic injury and its association with the socio demographic variables. Methodology Quantitative research approach-descriptive research design was adopted for the study.150 Patients who had orthopedic injury attending orthopedic outpatient department in Narayana Medical college hospital was selected by simple random sampling technique. Socio demographic variables questionnaire and Impact of Events Scale-Revised (IES-R) which has 22 items was used to collect the data. Descriptive and inferential statistics was used to analyze the data. Findings Among 150 patients 45 (30 %) have post traumatic stress disorder and 105 (70 %) have absence of post traumatic stress disorder.25 (16 %) were between the age group of 20-30years. Females had a higher rate of PTSD than male.42 (28 %) had high score on the avoidance scale, 40 (27 %) had high score on the intrusion scale, and 39 (26 %) had high score on the hyper arousal scale. There is a significant association between the prevalence of PTSD with the socio demographic variables like age, gender, marital status, type of accident, type of injury, duration of injury at the level of pless than0.05 level. Conclusion The study provides an insight that PTSD is a significant disorder which develops following the injury.