Date of Conferral

2022

Degree

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

School

Nursing

Advisor

Tanya Cohn

Abstract

When conducting elective surgeries, one of the challenges that healthcare providers experience is procedure cancellation. Across various healthcare settings, practitioners are employing relevant strategies to reduce the prevalence of procedure cancellations. The gap addressed in this project was the impact of calling patients to remind them to stay away from NSAIDs and blood thinners a few days prior to elective surgeries to avoid procedure cancellation. The administration of NSAIDs and blood thinners within that period may result in excessive bleeding in patients, which requires attention to improve elective surgery procedure outcomes. Erroneous administration of blood thinners too close to surgical procedures tends to give rise to cancellations, typically, done to mitigate further risks. The purpose of this staff education project was to determine whether providing evidence-based teaching to providers involved in peri and postoperative care might result in the reduction of procedure cancellations. De-identified data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The scheduled procedures completed improved to 73% post-intervention with a 12% improvement compared to the pre-intervention rate of 61%. Prior to the education, 73% of cancelled procedures were due to patients taking NSAIDs or blood thinners within 5 days of their procedure. Following education, a 23% improvement was noted with 51% of cancellations attributed to NSAIDS or blood thinners. This educational process has potential to offer relevant insights regarding the need for nurses to receive adequate training as ways of achieving desirable health outcomes when monitoring the administration of blood thinners prior to surgical procedures to save essential resources and affect a positive social change.

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