Success of the post-discharge telephone monitoring programme for out-patient surgery at the Hospital de Barcelona

In recent years, we have seen an increase of larger operations within outpatient surgery and many of the short stay operations are now carried out without hospital admission. In view of this fact, in 2018 the personnel from the Outpatient Surgery Unit at the Hospital de Barcelona started a telephone monitoring service of the evolution of the patients when they had been discharged and returned home.

Patients who have had general surgery (hernioplasty and proctology), paediatrics, otolarngology and breast surgery, orthopaedic or shoulder surgery are included in the post-surgery control.

The post-outpatient surgery control is carried out by a telephone call by the nurse to the patient in order to evaluate different parameters related to pain, fulfilment of the analgesic guidelines, general condition, problems in the surgical area and detection of warning signs, at the same time as taking advantage of the call to resolve any queries that the patient might have.

The results of the monitoring allow new requirements in the post-operatory period to be detected and to implant steps such as the adaptation of the analgesia guidelines. The study of the data collected from October, 2021 to October, 2022 shows that, according to the 352 calls made during this period, 84% of the patients gave a highly positive valuation to the initiative. Likewise, a total of 67incidences were detected, mainly related to the pain during the first hours, for which an adaptation of the analgesia guideline was given by the doctor in charge, both prior to discharge and once at home.