| Description |
Problem DescriptionOn the 34 bed, surgical-oncology, acute care unit at an academic research hospital, standardized care guidelines for postoperative patients are only used with three surgeries and two different surgical specialties. This causes variations in patient care and inconsistencies between nursing staff. This project looks to explore whether implementing an Enhanced Recovery After Surgery pathway, rather than standard care, in the postoperative setting will decrease the average length of stay and increase patient satisfaction.Available KnowledgeEnhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) pathways, also referred to as clinical pathways or surgical pathways, have been a growing concept for the past few decades (Elhassan et al., 2018). An ERAS pathway is a standardized, multidisciplinary, evidenced-based approach to patient care that encompasses aspects from the preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative arenas (Elhassan et al., 2018; Tyson & Chang, 2016; Wick et al., 2015; Norcross et al., 2019; Cerantola et al., 2013) The concept began with colorectal surgeries and has since been adopted into pathways for other surgical specialties (Elhassan et al., 2018; Cerantola et al., 2013; Brown & Kahn, 2018). While research specific to every specialty hasn't been completed in depth (Cerantola et al., 2013), ERAS pathways have shown to decrease the average length of stay for patients (Bertolaccini & Brunelli, 2019; Norcross et al., 2019; Carter-Brooks et al., 2018; Bisch et al., 2018), improve patient satisfaction (Wick et al., 2015; Brown & Kahn, 2018) and shown improvement on other postoperative outcomes such as time to bowel function, costs, and complications |
