Sammanfattning
The introduction of accelerated colon surgery procedures has meant that patients experience fewer complications, they recover more quickly and their stay in hospital can be reduced from around eight days to just two days.
A previous nursing study compared 80 colon surgery patients operated under the accelerated procedure with 80 who received conventional care. Some 33 per cent of the accelerated patients and 10 per cent of conventional patients would have preferred to have remained in hospital for another 1-2 days. At the same time, 21 per cent of patients in the accelerated group were readmitted, compared to 10 per cent in the conventional group.
On the basis of patient satisfaction and readmission frequency, the results were not satisfactory. The purpose of the study presented here is to evaluate whether colon surgery patients are more satisfied with their discharge and whether the readmission frequency is reduced by deferring discharge from the second to the third day after surgery, with the nurse calling the patient on the phone 1-2 days after discharge. The conclusion is that this intervention reduces the number of readmissions and 21 per cent to 10 per cent, at the same time increasing patient satisfaction with the point of discharge from 67 per cent to 94 per cent.