Reporting of Nursing Care Preventing Surgical Site Infection in Colorectal Cancer Patients with Omaha System

Student summary

Why This Research Matters

This article explores how nurses can use a special computer program called the Turkish-Nightingale Notes (T-NN) to keep track of their care for patients who have had surgery for colorectal cancer. The main goal was to see if this program helps prevent surgical site infections and makes it easier for nurses to document what they do.

The study looked at 30 people who had colorectal surgery in a university hospital between March and October 2015. Nurses used the T-NN program, which is based on something called the Omaha System. This system helps organize nursing care into different categories like skin health, infections, nutrition, etc.

The researchers found that out of these 30 patients, about half were women and a little less than half were men. Sadly, four people (which is about 13%) got an infection at their surgical site after the operation. The nurses identified nine main problems for these patients using the T-NN program. Skin issues were the most common problem they dealt with (51.1%), followed by infections (13.2%), nutrition concerns (9.4%), and sexuality-related issues (0.2%).

To solve these problems, nurses used different types of care like teaching patients what to do, giving them treatments or procedures, and keeping an eye on their progress through case management.

The study measured how well the nursing care worked by looking at three things: whether patients learned new information (knowledge), if they changed their behavior based on that knowledge, and their overall health status. The results showed a significant improvement in both what patients knew and how they behaved after receiving this specialized nursing care. This was true for all patients who had surgery, but especially noticeable in those who developed surgical site infections.

The authors concluded that the T-NN program is good at describing the nursing care process for these colorectal cancer patients. They think it could be useful for infection control nurses and suggest using it in other hospital units with different types of problems and patient groups. This might help everyone speak a common language about nursing, build evidence for what works best in nursing practice, and show how valuable nursing care really is.

For students learning about this topic, it's important to understand that the T-NN program uses standardized categories (like those from the Omaha System) to make sure all nurses are talking about similar things when they document patient care. This can lead to better teamwork and more consistent care across different healthcare settings. The study shows how using such a system helped improve patients' understanding of their health and their ability to take good care of themselves after surgery, which is very important for preventing complications like infections.

When thinking about the source of this information, it's an open-access journal article published in 2019 by Florence Nightingale Journal of Nursing. The study was conducted at a university hospital in Turkey (as indicated by the country metadata). While the abstract provides good detail on what happened and how they measured things, students should remember that detailed findings from individual patient cases or specific treatment outcomes are not fully described here; this is primarily about documenting care processes.

As future nurses, you would reason from this evidence by considering how standardized documentation systems like T-NN can improve communication among healthcare teams. You might think about how using such a system could help identify common problems early and ensure that all aspects of patient care are addressed systematically. It also highlights the role of nursing in infection prevention through education and ongoing monitoring.

It's important to note that while this study shows promising results for documenting care, it does not provide detailed information on treatment effectiveness or safety beyond what was observed in terms of knowledge gain and behavioral changes related to patient outcomes.

Faculty notes

Educational Relevance

This article investigates the application of a specialized nursing documentation system, the Turkish-Nightingale Notes (T-NN) program, based on the Omaha System framework. The primary aim is to evaluate its utility in managing and documenting nursing care processes for colorectal cancer patients undergoing surgery with a focus on preventing surgical site infections.

The study was conducted at a university hospital in Turkey between March and October 2015. It involved 30 adult patients who had undergone colorectal surgery during this period. All relevant nursing data, both from the hospital stay and discharge process, were coded into the T-NN program using categories defined by the Omaha System.

Key findings include: 1. Demographic distribution: 56.7% of participants were women and 43.3% men. 2. Surgical site infection rate: Four patients (13.3%) developed surgical site infections post-operatively. 3. Predominant nursing problems identified via T-NN coding: - Skin issues (51.1%) - Communicable/infectious conditions (13.2%) - Nutrition concerns (9.4%) - Sexuality-related issues (0.2%)

Nursing interventions employed included teaching, counseling, treatments/procedures, and case management/surveillance initiatives.

The study assessed patient outcomes in three domains: knowledge acquisition, behavioral changes, and overall health status. Statistical analysis using SPSS 22 revealed significant improvements in both