Improving Preoperative Education for Pituitary Surgery Patients: Creation of Digital Educational Material

INTRODUCTION: For patients undergoing endoscopic pituitary surgery, the most common complications are epistaxis, diabetes insipidus, cerebrospinal fluid leak, and other general postoperative complications. Members of the department of neurological surgery identified gaps in patient education regarding postsurgical complication management after pituitary surgery. This quality improvement project aims to develop a comprehensive digital educational tool that empowers patients and caregivers with the knowledge to better recognize and manage common postoperative complications. METHODS: This project used a pretest-posttest design and was underpinned by the Ottawa Model of Research Use. A digital educational material (Adobe Spark) was created by an interprofessional clinical team and was distributed to 17 patients through QR code or text message who were scheduled to undergo pituitary surgery. RESULTS: The Adobe webpage was scanned and viewed a total of 161 times in 4 months. Of 12 patients who completed both pretest and posttest, mean knowledge scores increased from 3.17 out of 5 (1.03) to 4.25 (0.97) out of 5 (P = 0.009). CONCLUSION: The development of a webpage for pituitary surgery education is a low-cost and efficient means to better standardize and improve the quality of the presurgical education provided to patients and families.