868 Development & Implementation of a Patient Information Leaflet for Elective Daycase Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy – a Quality Improvement Project

Aim

Daycase surgery reduces post-operative complications. Facilitating safe discharge is of paramount importance. One way of ensuring this is to enable patient access to reliable information.

In this quality improvement project, we aimed to create and implement an information leaflet that would give succinct information to patients on what to expect on discharge, and signposting to further resources if required. It was felt that this would ultimately result in a better and safer patient experience.

Method

A leaflet was designed in conjunction with surgical, nursing, and anaesthetic colleagues, using information available from the Royal College of Surgeons and British Association of Day Surgery. This was then given to all relevant patients post-operatively. Subsequently, a cohort of patients were called and asked for feedback on the usefulness of this leaflet, using a questionnaire approach based on the psychometric Likert scale.

Results

A total of 15 patients were contactable, of which 14 (n = 15, 93%) reported having received the leaflet. A further 12 (n = 14, 86%) described the leaflet as useful, with comments such as ‘it was a comfort blanket’ and that ‘it allayed some anxieties I had about my recovery’. 2 people (n = 14, 14%) mentioned that some information was difficult to understand.

Conclusions

Information leaflets make a positive contribution to the post-operative patient experience. In future, we will look to conduct further study into whether the introduction of this leaflet has improved our day case rate, reduced re-admissions and whether patients have had an overall better experience of care.