Are Doctors and Assistant Nurses Equally Good at Informing Patients

Are Doctors and Assistant Nurses Equally Good at Informing Patients: A Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing Information Recall Regarding Postoperative Self-care

Objectives: to compare patients' recall of information regarding postoperative self-care when being informed by either doctors or assistant nurses.

Methods: a non-blinded randomized single-center controlled trial being conducted at a hand-surgical unit in Northern Sweden. Included are adult ambulatory patients about to undergo surgery in local anesthesia. Patients are randomized into two parallel groups, with the control-group being informed by doctors and the intervention-group by assistant nurses. Patients will be telephoned one week after surgery for assessment of information recall via a structured telephone-interview.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Patient Care
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Information by a doctor; Behavioral: Information by an assistant nurse

Detailed Description

The study was conducted within the hand-surgical unit at Norrland's University Hospital in Umeå, county of Västerbotten, in Sweden. There are three hospitals in this sparsely populated county of 55432〖km〗^2 with about 268000 in population. The hand-surgery unit serves both the local population and is a tertiary referral center.

As the healthcare in Sweden is funded by taxpayers, the healthcare for patients is free, apart from a small nominal fee. There was a total of seven doctors and seven assistant nurses participating in the study, all having several years of experience working with hand-surgical care. Prior to the study, doctors had the formal responsibility of informing patients about their postoperative care. However, despite it being the surgeons' responsibility, the task of informing patients was at times performed by assistant nurses. After receiving the information, patients were discharged and left the clinic. Normally patients receive a complementary written information after being informed verbally. Patients included in the study did not receive the written information, since it might have been a confounding factor in understanding of information.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 72
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• Sweden
  • Sverige
    • Umeå, Sverige, Sweden, 90956
      • Norrland's University Hospital

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• about to undergo elective hand surgical procedure in local anaesthesia
• 18 years or older.

Exclusion Criteria:

• does not speak Swedish
• dementia or other form av cognitive impairment

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Single

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Informed by a doctor; Information by a doctor	Behavioral: Information by a doctor; Information received by patients after ambulatory hand surgery under local anaesthetic about postoperative self care given by a doctor.
Experimental: Informed by an assistant nurse; Information by an assistant nurse	Behavioral: Information by an assistant nurse; Information received by patients after ambulatory hand surgery under local anaesthetic about postoperative self care given by an assistent nurse.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Information recall	A telephone-interviews were performed seven days after the surgery using a structured questionnaire. For the main objective, seven questions were asked testing patients recall/knowledge of their postoperative self-care. Each question evaluated the patients' knowledge of a unique aspect of postoperative self-care. The questionnaire is designed based on the postoperative info sheet received by patients after hand surgery.	1 week after surgery

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Stress and satisfaction	During the telephone interview the patients could rate on a 1-10 scale their level of "feeling of understood the information", stress, and satisfaction. "Feeling of having understood the information" means the patients perception of having fully understood all the information and knowing fully what to do when leaving the hospital. For assessing "stress", the interviewer asked about the level of stress that the patient had experienced during the week following the surgery. Regarding "satisfaction", the interviewer asked and assessed how satisfied the patients were with the way the personnel had informed the patient (e.g. not used difficult or confusing language, had given the patient time to ask questions etc).	1 week after surgery
Additional healthcare contacts	Compare differences in the number of healthcare contacts due to not being able to recall or having understood information.	30 days after surgery

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Umeå University
• Investigators: Study Chair: Martin Fahlström, Umeå University

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): February 1, 2018
• Primary Completion (Actual): June 30, 2018
• Study Completion (Actual): June 30, 2018

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: December 17, 2018
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: March 26, 2019
• First Posted (Actual): March 28, 2019

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): March 28, 2019
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: March 26, 2019
• Last Verified: March 1, 2019

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: 2017/446-31

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: No

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No