Assessment of two designs for an Oral surgery Postoperative Leaflet

Around the world it is considered good practice to provide patients with a postoperative instruction and advice leaflet following tooth extractions. It has never been reported whether the design or the content is effective or helpful for a patient's recovery.

To assess the opinions of patients about two postoperative instructions leaflets with similar content but different designs.

A questionnaire was administered to 32 patients who had recently undergone oral surgery. The questionnaire asked patients about their satisfaction with the information and their overall opinion of two postoperative leaflet designs (a conventional and a daily planner design).

53% of the patients preferred the daily planner design and 6.3% preferred the conventional model. 60% of the patients recommended the daily-planner leaflet for future patients.

The results of this study suggest that patients find postoperative instructions leaflets to be helpful because they can help to guide patient to follow instructions after surgery. The daily planner was preferred because it was easy to review every day during recovery.