General Surgery Resuscitation Preference Documentation: A Quality Improvement Initiative.

Area of Science:

• Medical Quality Improvement
• Surgical Patient Care
• Perioperative Medicine

Background:

• Documentation of patient resuscitation preferences is often insufficient in surgical settings.
• There is a need to improve the systematic recording of patient wishes regarding resuscitation before surgery.

Purpose of the Study:

• To increase the percentage of general surgery patients with documented resuscitation statuses from 82% to 90% within one year.
• To implement and evaluate a quality improvement initiative focused on perioperative resuscitation documentation.

Main Methods:

• Modified surgical consent forms to include resuscitation status.
• Integrated resuscitation status into the perioperative surgical checklist.
• Updated patient educational materials on resuscitation options with patient partner input.

Main Results:

• Achieved the study aim, increasing the documentation rate to 90% for general surgery patients.
• Observed high adoption of new consent forms and moderate use of the surgical checklist.
• Identified limited instances of additional resuscitation details being added to clinical notes.

Conclusions:

• Successfully enhanced the documentation of resuscitation statuses in a large tertiary care center.
• Routine integration of checks into standard forms effectively prompts early patient conversations about resuscitation preferences.