Outpatient Surgery Magazine - Subscribers

OR Excellence Awards 2015 - September 2015 - Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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1 5 4 O U T P A T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 5 12 Post-op Warning Signs for Patients These are the symptoms that warrant a phone call to the surgeon. T o call or not to call? Discharged patients may be either extremely reluctant or far too eager to reach out to their surgeons once they're home and experi- encing real or perceived post-operative symptoms. How helpful would it be if they knew exactly which developments warranted further communication, and which didn't? At our facility, what began as an adjunct to a practice bundle designed to reduce colon surgical site infections has evolved into an easy-to-understand patient teaching tool that helps us achieve that goal. One of our initial concerns for the bundle was that we wanted it to be evidence-based. While researching literature to find specific needs and strategies for post-operative patient teaching and post-discharge follow-up, I came across a thought-provoking study in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons (osmag.net/VTygZ8). By using a method called the Delphi technique, in which a panel of experts estab- lishes a consensus, a group of 11 experts had developed an early- warning system to prevent readmissions after colorectal surgery. Consensus was defined as having been reached when at least 70% of the experts rated a symptom as 4 or 5 on a 5-point Likert scale (rang- ing from 1, meaning "strongly disagree," to 5, meaning "strongly agree"). The experts identified 10 symptoms that indicate to patients that they should call their physicians and 2 additional symptoms that I N F E C T I O N P R E V E N T I O N Pegi Wasserman, BSN, RN z HOT TIP A temperature above 101.5°F is one of the warning signs patients should know about.

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