The relationship of preoperative teaching received, preoperative teaching valued, and selected conditioning factors to postoperative recovery in ambulatory laparoscopic abdominal surgery patients

Rapid growth of ambulatory surgery with the demand to decrease cost and reduce length of stay, diminish time and opportunity for surgery preparation leaving patients potentially ill prepared for home recovery. Preoperative teaching programs provide information regarding skills, procedures, and role expectations. Yet patients relate concerns about receiving inadequate information regarding pain management, and length of recovery for resumption of normal activities, employment, and childcare. Clearly, patients value receiving information, but nurses may not be providing the specific type of teaching patients want or find helpful for home recovery. The purpose of the study was to describe the relationship of preoperative teaching received and preoperative teaching valued with selected conditioning factors to postoperative recovery in adult ambulatory surgery patients.; Orem's Self-Care Deficit Theory provided the theoretical framework for a descriptive correlational one-group design to sample 40 ambulatory laparoscopic abdominal surgery patients, ages 18-75. Twenty-four subjects completed the study with 20 laparoscopic cholecystectomies and 4 laparoscopic herniorraphies. Data collection instruments were Postdischarge Recovery Scale (Cronbach alpha = .92) measuring postoperative recovery, Preoperative Teaching Questionnaire measuring perceived preoperative teaching received (Cronbach alpha = .88) and perceived preoperative teaching valued (Cronbach alpha = .85), and Demographic and Health Information Form measuring selected conditioning factors.; Correlations and simple regression explored the relationship among the variables in one research question and two hypotheses. A moderate relationship between teaching received and postoperative recovery exists. Preoperative teaching received explained 20°10 of the variance of postoperative recovery. Hypothesis I, tested the relationship of preoperative teaching received and postoperative recovery, was supported. In the regression analysis, 20% of postoperative recovery variance was explained by preoperative teaching received. Hypothesis II, tested preoperative teaching valued and postoperative recovery, was not supported.; No relationships exist between the selected conditioning factors and postoperative recovery. Findings support Orem's Self Care Deficit Theory as study theoretical framework; validated usefulness of 2 tools in clinical practice; contribute to the limited body of knowledge regarding patient self-care needs following laparoscopic ambulatory surgery. Learning what patients value and to what information they are most likely to respond enables nurses to develop patient teaching programs to improve the quality of postoperative patient recovery.