Patients are discharged quicker and sicker, making home care education a critical component of safe surgical recovery. A new series of interactive and engaging 30-minute sessions will be offered Monday through Wednesday at the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Central Theatre to showcase innovative patient engagement and education programs. Learn about new requirements, best practices, and all the resources that the ACS offers to support surgical patients to ensure their safe recovery post-discharge. More than 10 million operations are performed annually, and despite all of the global patient safety initiatives put in place in the last decade, adverse event rates in surgery have not changed significantly.1 Although much progress has been made to improve care within the operating room and hospital patient care units, many errors in preoperative and postoperative continue to occur, leading to complications.
Considering 65 percent of all procedures are now same-day or outpatient, patients and their caregivers shoulder a larger responsibility for better outcomes. Traditionally, nurses or other members of the patient care team have delivered verbal instructions regarding post-discharge care, but this method has limitations, including provider inconsistencies, with nurses choosing topics they know and perceive as important, patient distractions, and rare opportunities to assess patient and caregiver comprehension.2 Providing written materials, videos, and skills training improve retention, satisfaction, and patient outcomes, which means fewer readmissions.3-4
ACS patient education programs are evidence-based with extensive references and are all developed with consensus from multiple associations and patient groups. They meet all literacy standards and are evaluated by multiple groups prior to release. Most of these exceptional programs are supported by partial grant funding, so they are available electronically to all, with print copies offered at minimal charge to ACS members.
Join us in the ACS Theatre for these enlightening and interactive sessions and leave with new tools to easily implement in your practice. The schedule is as follows:
Monday
9:30–10:00 am
Wound Care Assessment Made Easy: New Apps to Evaluate Healing
10:30–11:00 am
New Trends in Negative Pressure Wound Therapy: What’s Best for My Patient?
11:30 am–12:00 noon
Opioid-Sparing Program: The New Education Platform and Functional Assessment
Tuesday
3:00–3:30 pm
Central Line Management: Training the Next Caregiver to Prevent Infections and Occlusion
4:00–4:30 pm
Feeding Tubes: Simple Procedure, but not for the Caregiver: Better Training Equals Best Outcomes
Wednesday
9:00–9:30 am
Quit Smoking before Surgery: Cigs, Vapes, and Reefs? Counseling and Reimbursement Help All
2:00–2:30 pm
Ostomy Education and Simulation Training for Caregivers: A Successful Way to Reduce Readmission and Decrease Complications
References
Wang Y, Eldridge N, Metersky ML, et al. National trends in patient safety for four common conditions, 2005-2011. N Engl J Med. 2014;370(4):341-351.
Fredericks S, Guruge S, Sidani S, Wan T. Postoperative patient education: A systematic review. Clin Nurs Res. 2010;19:144–164.
Stern C, Lockwood C. Knowledge retention from preoperative patient information. Int J Evid Based Healthc. 2005;3:45–63.
Heneghan KC, McGee MF, Bailey HR, Sachdeva AK, Daly JM, Davis E, Colwell JC. Ostomy Home Skills Kit (OSHK) is effective at preparing patients to confidently manage their postoperative recovery. J Cancer Edu. 2015;30(3):S320-321.