Providing consistent information at every step of the enhanced recovery pathway

Educating patients prior to surgery is a crucial step in enhanced recovery pathways, and so ensuring that all staff provide consistent and accurate information to patients is crucial.

This is important not just for clinical staff but all team members who are involved in the care of patients’ such as, medical secretaries, admissions clerks, cleaning staff, mealtime assistants and porters.

When we implemented our highly successful enhanced recovery pathway we invested considerable time in making sure that all staff were involved in the change process. We provided education sessions to our support staff on how the new pathway worked, and made sure that they understood how important their role in supporting the pathway was.

The value of this was significant. It contributed to improved working relationships, boosted staff morale, helped us to reduce length of hospital stay, and improved the quality of our outcomes to patients.

The patients also appreciated it, and one patients’ feedback on the patient opinion website clearly demonstrates the important role that all staff have in ensuring patients having an optimal surgical experience (click here to read the patient feedback).