P-OGC76 A patient engagement event to assess feasibility of preoperative enhanced recovery groups in patients with oesophagogastric cancer undergoing surgery

Abstract

Abstract Background Enhanced recovery (ER) includes pre-operative counselling during individual patient consultations with multidisciplinary team (MDT) members. Patients can experience lengthy appointments seeing multiple professionals. This negatively impacts on their ability to retain and process information, and results in long, overrunning clinics. Separate, virtual ER group sessions have been proposed to deliver aspects of the pre-operative appointment which are common to all patients undergoing oesophagogastric (OG) cancer surgery. The aim is to improve patient engagement and experience, and improve efficiency of clinics. A patient engagement event was undertaken to gain feedback from patients about the existing service and the proposed virtual group. Methods A semi-structured telephone interview was developed with the support of a Patient & Public Engagement Team. The 30 minute interview covered aspects such as patient experience of ER information delivery, the quality of the information they received and their thoughts on attending virtual group sessions. Seventy patients, who had undergone surgery for OG cancer in the previous 14 months were invited to take part. A Health Informatics Team screened the patient list prior to invitation letters being sent. The telephone interviews took place in November 2020. Results Twenty-seven patients responded (37%). Of these, 89% felt they received all information required for surgery preparation. Over 50% reported receiving adequate information to support with common post-operative issues (dietary - 81%; physical activity - 55%) but would like more on others (psychological impact - 26%). Patients highlighted that the MDT clinic took many hours and information delivery was overwhelming. The internet was accessible to 85% and 56% thought the information provided prior to surgery could have been delivered in a virtual group. Patient perceived advantages to virtual groups included: peer support; reduced travel; and avoidance of information repetition and overload. Conclusions Patient preference, perspective and needs are paramount when designing healthcare services. Results from this patient engagement event suggest that the delivery of preoperative information and counselling as part of ER could be improved through the implementation of virtual ER groups. They also suggest that most patients perceive benefits to such a model, including the addition of peer support. The next steps in the proof of concept are to develop the virtual groups MDT content and pilot in a cohort of patients, evaluating patient related outcome measures and impact on service efficiency.