Proposal for pre-surgery nursing care

Abstract

Canceling surgeries creates stress for the patient and burdens the institution, reflecting inefficiency in hospital administration. The present study, designed as a quantitative, observational, descriptive, retrospective, prospective and cross-sectional research, analyzed the scheduled, performed and suspended surgeries of the Unified Health System (with the highest percentage of cancellations), in a teaching hospital, categorized by specialty, reason for suspension and source of payment, from the years 2014 to 2017. The study proposes a nursing intervention system, in order to reduce the cancellation of UHS surgeries, based on a nursing consultation and active search (telephone contact with the patient or family member), 48 hours before surgery. The study, carried out with 159 UHS patients with scheduled elective surgeries, found that the average of surgical suspensions was 17%, above the general historical average (10.5%) and the historical average of UHS (14%). After the intervention, the observed suspension rate was 15.3%, lower than the rate of 22%, when there was no prior contact.