Question

1. Why is safe patient handling important for nurses as well as patients?

2. Why are nutritional status, protein status, and hemoglobin measurement important to wound healing?

3.  How age and environmental factors affect sensory function?

4. Discuss the benefits nurses have made to patient outcomes by instituting preoperative education.

Answer 1

1. Patient handling is extremely important and significantly affects patient outcomes following hospitalisation.

With respect to importance for nurses,

• Standard of care practices taking universal precautions ensures protection against infectious agents and biohazards.
• Ensuring adequate barriers like gloves, masks, face shields and PPE, frequent hadwashing and maintainence if hygiene also prevents cross-infections.

From, patient side:

• Prevents cross infections
• Gentle handling prevents accidental in injuries.
• Early mobilization and encouragement for mobilization prevents DVT and pulmonary embolism.
• Change of position in bed ridden patients prevents bedsores.

2.Wound healing occurs in steps. For proper healing of wound tissue, adequate collagen formation is required. This is obtained from body proteins. Protein malnourishment can thus adversely affect healing. Wound healing is also a metabolically intensive process and caloric deficit can delay or disrupt healing. Hemoglobin is necessary for oxygen transport and this plays a crucial role in aerobic metabolism. Since healing is a hypermetabolic state, it needs surplus oxygen delivery and in the setting of anemia, oxygen delivery is affected and metabolism in turn is affected. This leads to poor wound healing.

3. Age decreases sensory function due to degenerative processes and demyelination.

Environmental pollutants ( noxious fumes, wound pollution etc) can accelerate this degenerative process.

4. Preoperative education improves patient morbidity and mortality outcomes. Patients are often unaware of what occurs in the postoperative period. Preoperative sessions describing the procedure, post operative issues including pain management, needeneed for earlyoearly mobilization and and its benefits, preoperative education of measures like incentive spirometry and explanation of wound care and precautions significantly improve outcomes and prevent unnecessary prolongation of hospital stay.