Assessment Of Nursing Knowledge

Topic:

Critically discuss the nurses role in pre-operative patient education in relation to physical and psychological patient needs.

Aim:

This written assignment contributes to the development of evidence-based practice in nursing through the provision of relevant nursing knowledge and research related to the module. The purpose of this assessment is to demonstrate that the student has the ability to examine a pertinent area of nursing practice.

Historically, the goal of preoperative assessment has been to determine patient factors that significantly increase the risk for perioperative complications.¹ Overall, the perioperative complication rate has declined during the past 30 years because of improved anesthetic and surgical techniques.² However, surgical complications are common and often preventable.³ Analyzing surgical complication data is challenging because of inconsistencies in classifying and reporting events.⁴ A recent study by Haynes et al³ demonstrated that the risk of perioperative death from noncardiac surgery was 1.5%, but declined to 0.8% after the use of a surgical safety checklist.

The complexity of the perioperative environment is growing because of an increased use of technology in the setting of institutional production pressures.⁵ The perioperative environment is “information intensive and relying heavily on how well information flows between phases, locations and providers.”^5(p169) Wide variation exists in the type of information that is lost in the perioperative environment. “Notably, handoffs or transitions in care [are] particularly prone to information loss.”^5(p165) Communication breakdown, information loss, and increased workload and competing tasks pose the greatest threats to perioperative patient safety.⁵ We believe the preoperative assessment is a critical point of the care trajectory as the patient transitions through the perioperative environment.