Pre-Operative Assessment and Education

Abstract

Introduction: Surgery is a major event in an individual’s life. The complete surgical episode is known as perioperative period. Perioperative nursing in general includes three phases; pre-operative, intra-operative and post-operative. The first and initial phase (pre-operative) involves the rendering of nursing care to the patients who are planned to undergo surgery (Spry, 2005) [1]. It was evident through literature that during this phase, assessment and education of the patient is the prime responsibility of health care providers to minimize the risk during the surgery and to have better outcomes of the patients. Hence, a seven weeks project was initiated at surgical care units of Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, Pakistan. In this project, based on the need assessment, education sessions were conducted for the health care workers which were followed by the distribution of flash cards for their references. In addition, file review and pre operative patient’s interview was conducted for the outcome evaluation. Purpose: To create awareness among healthcare workers to minimize the risk of morbidity and mortality of patients undergoing surgery and to reinforce nurses of surgical areas for the accurate assessment and education of patients, undergoing surgery. Methodology: All three surgical care units of the University teaching hospital were selected as project site and to conduct the project, permission and verbal consent was obtained from manager of these units. A total of 30 patients undergoing surgery were included in the project and were followed for their complete pre-operative assessment and education by nurses and other health care workers. For the data collection, a tool for pre operative assessment and education was developed. Based on the assessment, altogether three educational sessions were conducted for all health care workers working in the surgical care areas. Data was tabulated in Excel and percentages were calculated to analyze the data of before and after the education sessions. Results: Results revealed that education sessions increased the health care worker’s knowledge for assessing all the necessary components of a patient before surgery. Additionally, these sessions enhanced nurses’ awareness regarding the risks the patients might undergo before and after the surgery and how to prevent those risks through a thorough assessment and education of preoperative patients. Conclusion: Nurses and other health care providers should perform a complete and thorough assessment and provide necessary education to patients’ undergoing surgery in order to reduce the bounce back rate from operating room and to avoid any kind of risk for their patients undergoing for any surgical procedure.