The assessment of surgery-related coping: The coping with surgical stress scale (COSS)

Surgery can be regarded as a major stressor for any patient. High preoperative emotional arousal may negatively influence adjustment during surgery as well as the postoperative recovery rate. Consequently, the strategies individuals employ for coping with this stress are of prime importance for the quality of their adaptation. This paper reports the construction and empirical assessment of a new instrument for measuring strategies employed to cope with surgical stress. Factor analysis of this instrument, the Coping with Surgical Stress Scale (COSS), yielded five factors: Rumination, Optimism and Trust, Turning to Social and Religious Resources, Threat Avoidance, and Information Seeking. Internal consistencies of the corresponding subscales were satisfactory. Results concerning external relationships of the COSS with dispositional coping, state and trait anxiety, and indicators of perioperative adjustment showed that the COSS is a useful instrument for measuring surgery-related coping.