Preoperative Teaching of Spanish Speaking Patients Undergoing a Total Knee Arthroplasty

Abstract

An increasing number of minority individuals are seeking care in the healthcare industry. Patients whose second language is English often do not read or understand post-operative care materials. This is detrimental to recovery and increases the length of hospital stays. Incorporating clinical practice guidelines (CPG) for same-day rehabilitation into the preoperative education for Spanish speaking patients will facilitate patient understanding, and knowledge that patients cannot receive through information packets or in the education they are currently receiving. The purpose of this DNP project was to develop educational materials that are effective for a culturally diverse population of patients of Hispanic origin receiving total knee arthroplasty (TKA). The study question was: Does improving educational materials effectively increase minority patients’ understanding of post-operative care, thus resulting in shorter hospital stays? The Campinha-Bacote Model of Cultural competence guided this quality improvement project. This project had two phases. The first phase was to design the delivery of pre- and post-operative instruction through development of a pre- and post-operative educational product for Spanish-speaking TKA patients to engage in post-operative care activities. The second phase involved the training of nurses with the use of the educational product, as well as the delivery process for the pre- and post-operative educational product given to patients. The target population of this study was minority patients who underwent TKA surgery and were treated with accelerated rehabilitation post-operation. Chart reviews was used to collect date of discharge for patients given the instructions in Spanish. Feedback was obtained from the nurses and the patients on how to improve the educational material. The average length of stay was calculated for these patients and compared with previous length of stays for non-English speaking patients in a bar graph. Results indicated that intervention-based patients had a shorter length of stay.