Utilisation of excellent communication is critical to my patient outcomes. Spending the time asking questions, and discussing data with people. Learning about them and their condition, and taking the time to understand the problems their condition causes. A research focus of mine (and many others) has been identifying how we can optimise patients for surgery – we have great data on personality and behaviour types, weight and obesity etc – but a closer assessment of other factors we can optimise before surgery, to improve post operative outcomes. Outcomes could be function, pain and subjective patient scores – and how a patient does is critical to me.
Enhanced recovery after surgery protocols and ‘GLA:D’ programs are examples of optimisers that have shown efficacy. Not every research article we can discuss or dissect will be perfect in its writing or content, but the overall points and potential implications trigger me to incorporate these things to my initial/pre-operative chats. Just some more surgical food for thought in Hip and Knee replacement surgery.
Research article