Are Doctors and Assistant Nurses Equally Good at Informing Patients: A Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing Information Recall Regarding Postoperative Self-care
Trial Snapshot
- Phase
- Not Applicable
- Status
- Completed
- Sponsor
- Umeå University
- Enrollment
- 72
- Locations
- 2
- Primary Endpoint
- Information recall
Study Overview
Brief Summary
Objectives: to compare patients' recall of information regarding postoperative self-care when being informed by either doctors or assistant nurses.
Methods: a non-blinded randomized single-center controlled trial being conducted at a hand-surgical unit in Northern Sweden. Included are adult ambulatory patients about to undergo surgery in local anesthesia. Patients are randomized into two parallel groups, with the control-group being informed by doctors and the intervention-group by assistant nurses. Patients will be telephoned one week after surgery for assessment of information recall via a structured telephone-interview.
Detailed Description
The study was conducted within the hand-surgical unit at Norrland's University Hospital in Umeå, county of Västerbotten, in Sweden. There are three hospitals in this sparsely populated county of 55432〖km〗^2 with about 268000 in population. The hand-surgery unit serves both the local population and is a tertiary referral center.
As the healthcare in Sweden is funded by taxpayers, the healthcare for patients is free, apart from a small nominal fee. There was a total of seven doctors and seven assistant nurses participating in the study, all having several years of experience working with hand-surgical care. Prior to the study, doctors had the formal responsibility of informing patients about their postoperative care. However, despite it being the surgeons' responsibility, the task of informing patients was at times performed by assistant nurses. After receiving the information, patients were discharged and left the clinic. Normally patients receive a complementary written information after being informed verbally. Patients included in the study did not receive the written information, since it might have been a confounding factor in understanding of information.
Study Design
- Study Type
- Interventional
- Allocation
- Randomized
- Intervention Model
- Parallel
- Primary Purpose
- Health Services Research
- Masking
- Single (Investigator)
Masking Description
The investigator is blinded to group allocation.
Eligibility Criteria
- Ages
- 18 Years to — (Adult, Older Adult)
- Sex
- All
- Accepts Healthy Volunteers
- No
Inclusion Criteria
- •about to undergo elective hand surgical procedure in local anaesthesia
- •18 years or older.
Exclusion Criteria
- •does not speak Swedish
- •dementia or other form av cognitive impairment
Outcomes
Primary Outcomes
Information recall
Time Frame: 1 week after surgery
A telephone-interviews were performed seven days after the surgery using a structured questionnaire. For the main objective, seven questions were asked testing patients recall/knowledge of their postoperative self-care. Each question evaluated the patients' knowledge of a unique aspect of postoperative self-care. The questionnaire is designed based on the postoperative info sheet received by patients after hand surgery.
Secondary Outcomes
- Additional healthcare contacts(30 days after surgery)
- Stress and satisfaction(1 week after surgery)
Investigators
Aleksandra McGrath
Senior Consultant
Umeå University