PERSONAL SERVICE Shannon Aifuwa, BSN, RN, and Kathryn Farrell, MSN, RN, with procedure- and surgeon-specific discharge instructions.

PATIENT EDUCATION
Customize Your Discharge Instructions
Post-op care instructions are often generic and don't reflect what patients should do at home following specific procedures performed by specific surgeons. That's why we worked with our surgeons, nurse practitioners and the recovery room nursing staff to develop customized discharge instructions based on individual surgeon preferences. We store the instructions in a library on our hospital's intranet and organize them by procedure and physician, making them easily accessible and a snap to edit when we introduce new procedures or physicians want to update their recommendations.

Instead of patients receiving "one-size-fits-all" instructions, our recovery room nurses print out easy-to-understand (no overly clinical explanations allowed!) guidelines developed by the surgical team. The instructions cover activity restrictions, acceptable pain medications, what to eat in the hours following surgery, physical therapy exercises, what to expect as the normal course of recovery, and unexpected developments that require a phone call to the hospital or trip to the ER.

Our nurses love the printable instructions because they help coordinate their plans of care and are an efficient way to provide patients with beneficial references. Surgeons love the forms, too, because they eliminate phone calls from patients who are confused about what they can and cannot do at home.
Kathryn Farrell, MSN, RN
Bruce Kloss, BSN, RN, CNOR
Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pa.
[email protected]