Recovery Toolkits: An Observational Assessment of Nurse-Delivered, Pragmatic, Behavioral Pain Medicine for Post-Surgical Patients

The Stanford "Recovery Toolkit" program is delivered by nurses across multiple surgical recovery units and surgery types, including neurosurgery, spine, and orthopedic surgeries. All patients who enter the units are offered a "Recovery Toolkit", which is a physical and branded bag. The program includes the following elements: a descriptive brochure and orientation to the contents of the bag. "Recovery Toolkits" include a behavioral pain medicine self-help book, an app with a downloadable pain management audiofile, earbuds, and a pen. Patients on all participating units have access to iPads where they may view a digital behavioral pain medicine program ("My Surgical Success"), consisting of three 15-minute video learning modules.

At discharge, patients are asked to evaluate their pain care and perception about the "Recovery Toolkit" in a 10-item survey that includes items as to whether the patient received a "Recovery Toolkit" (yes/no), did they use the "Recovery Toolkit" (yes/no), their satisfaction with the "Recovery Toolkit" (6-point likert scale), and recommendation for continuing the program (5-point likert scale). Chart review will extract data for demographics, surgery type, existing pain conditions and comorbidities, pain intensity scores averaged over the duration of their inpatient stay, as well as total opioid use during hospital stay and a daily average for inpatient opioid use. At one month after surgery, patients who agreed to be contacted will be asked their average pain intensity (0-10), whether they are taking opioid medication (yes/no) and how much (morphine equivalent daily dose), whether they have used the Recovery Toolkit information (yes/no), and, if yes, to please rate the helpfulness of the Recovery Toolkit information (0-10).

Nurses will be surveyed to determine the level of burden to deliver the intervention (0-6), their perceived value of the intervention to their patients (0-6), and their assessment on whether the program should be continued/expanded (0-6).