Improving Quality, Safety and the Patient’s Surgical Experience through the Creation of the “my Surgery” web-section and ‘Meet the Team’ video.Barbara d’Entremont, RN, BScN, Education Lead, Pre-Admission Unit Standardization Project.Barbara Crawford Newton, RN, BScN, MA, Corporate Clinical Manager, Pre-Admission Unit.Dr. Sylvain Gagné, MD, Anesthesiologist, FRCPC, Corporate Medical Director, Pre-Admission Unit.Hazel Harding, Communications Advisor, The Ottawa Hospital.

Context: Pre-op preparation for surgery is critical in managing risk, optimizing a patient’s condition, decreasing anxiety and educating the patient (and family) before surgery. Yearly at The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) ~30,000 patients are referred to the Pre-Admission Unit (PAU) from 11 surgical services (~150 surgeons) to prepare for their surgical experience.  Problem / Issue: 1.Patient Stress - Being told you need surgery can be very stressful for patients (and families) and the fear of the unknown can often be overwhelming. Equally, travel time and cost involved in coming to the hospital for multiple appointments can be taxing. 2.Inconsistent Patient Information - Ensuring that all caregivers involved in the patient’s surgical path (from the surgeon’s office to discharge) provide consistent information to patients is critical to ensure quality, safety and seamless care.  Intervention: Following a review of the patient education practices in the perioperative program and organization of each area, the ‘my Surgery’ web-section and ‘Meet the Team’ video were created in collaboration with 16 department teams and over 100 inter-professionals in English and French. The goal was to provide a patient focused web-section to ease their concerns and allow them to access and complete pre-op information and tools virtually prior to meeting with their surgeon.  

Measurement and Contribution to Patient Safety and Quality ImprovementThe web-section and ‘Meet the Team’ video went live October 2, 2012 so the ability to evaluate is still preliminary.  The anticipated quality and safety results include: Improved consistency of messages (surgeon’s office to discharge). Improved access to the ‘Pre-op Health History Patient Questionnaire” prior to a patient’s visit with their surgeon will result in improved pre-operative screening for medical, surgical, social, medication and discharge risks. Increased knowledge for patients, their families and health-care teams re: pre-op protocols. (i.e.: fasting protocol, pain control, smoking cessation, discharge planning).Ability for the hospital to update content in real-time so the most current information is available to patients and health-care teams. (~30,000 patients, 150 surgeons,11 surgical services and hundreds of other professionals involved in a patient’s care).

Anticipated Outcomes:Increased ability to provide ‘remote’ pre-op assessment for healthy patients via telephone as a result of improved screening and access to information virtually. Increased efficiency, satisfaction, safety and quality of care (pre and post-op).

Lessons Learned

The information age is here and electronic media is the way of the future. It has a great ability to improve knowledge, communication, quality and safety gaps in a large academic, tertiary care and multi-campus environment. The ability to reach out to a large number of people (staff, patients, and families) quickly and consistently is critical. The ability to update information in ‘real time’ will also help to integrate new changes in best practice and research so the patient can receive the best care possible from the inter-professional teams. A project such as this looks like a simple task but requires numerous dedicated individuals and teams collaborating at many levels (clinical and non-clinical). This project demonstrates the critical ingredient of teamwork and inter-professional collaboration in improving quality, safety, seamless care and outcomes for our patients, families and teams.

View the ‘my Surgery’ web-section at:http://www.ottawahospital.on.ca/mySurgery

 View the ‘Meet the Team’ video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?

feature=player_embedded&v=O1yEzdCIzxc