AN ANALYSIS OF THE DIFFERENCES AMONG STANDARDIZED AND NONSTANDARDIZED PATIENT EDUCATION FORMATS: EFFECTS ON NURSING DOCUMENTATION OF PATIENT OUTCOMES.
Contributors: University of South Florida.
Published: 1991
Number of pages: 168
Subjects: Education, Health.; Health Sciences, Nursing.; Education, Adult and Continuing.
Description: Patient education is used within the hospital setting to prepare patients for discharge from the hospital to home. Standardization of patient education materials may affect the delivery and documentation of patient care by nursing caregivers. Standardized patient education formats can provide more consistent content and serve as a documentation tool for patient education activities. The purpose of this study was to compare differences among patient outcomes with and without the use of a standardized patient education protocol.

Thirty adult patients undergoing surgery were given postoperative patient education using the standardized format. A control group of 30 patients received patient education without the use of the standardized format. Results of the nursing documentation of patient outcomes were compared for the two groups. Nine content areas were compared for both groups. In addition, the patients' 30-day return rates to the hospital following discharge were compared.

Individual Chi Square tests revealed that two content areas, knowledge of complications of illness and knowledge of treatment/procedure management, were significantly improved through the use of the protocol (p $<$.05). Rate of return was not influenced by the protocol. Serial Chi Square tests on the two significantly different outcomes revealed that length of hospitalization was significantly longer for patients with favorable results in these content areas (p $<$.05).

Conclusions were that standardized patient education improves the documentation of patient education regarding topics with universal applicability to a broad diagnostic group, but is less influential for individualized patient needs such as medication instructions. Recommendations were to expand the study to include a larger sample size and to investigate the use of similar tools in other diagnostic groups.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-12, Section: A, page: 4228.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA, 1991.

School code: 0206.