Nurses' Performance and Self Care Practices Regarding Discharge Plan for Patients Post Total Knee Arthroplasty

Abstract

Background:  Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) remains the gold standard treatment of end stage arthritis with high success and patient satisfaction rates.

The aim of this study was to evaluate nurses' performance and self-care practices regarding discharge plan for patient post total knee arthroplasty.

Research design: A descriptive research design was used.

Setting: This study was conducted at orthopedic department of new surgery hospital at Zagazig University hospitals, Sharqia Governate, Egypt.

Subjects: A convenient sample of available nurses (46) and purposive sample of 40 patients were selected from the mentioned setting.

Tools: five tools were utilized for data collection, pertinent as follows: Self-Administered Questionnaire for Nurses, observational checklist for Nurses, Interviewing Questionnaire for Patients, Numeric Pain Scale and Patient Self-Reported Questionnaire regarding Self-Care Practices.

Results: Revealed that, less than two thirds (63%) of the studied nurses had unsatisfactory knowledge regarding total knee arthroplasty. More than half (56.5%) of the studied nurses had inadequate total practice scores regarding discharge plan of the patient undergoing total knee arthroplasty, majority (82.5%) of studied patients had unsatisfactory knowledge regarding discharge plan post total knee arthroplasty. More than half (52.5%) of the studied patients had severe pain while, less than one fifth (12.5%) had mild and moderate pain. More than half (55.0%) of the studied patients need of assistance concerning total ability to perform ADLs. While, nearly two fifth (20.0%) of patients completely dependent and independent respectively. more than three quarters  (77.5%) of patients had inadequate total self-care practices scores post total knee arthroplasty.

Conclusion: There was a positive correlation coefficient between total patients' knowledge and total self-care practices of the patients. There was a positive correlation between total patients' knowledge and total ability to perform of activities of daily living. There was a highly significant correlation between total knowledge score and total practice score regarding total knee arthroplasty among the studied nurses. There was a highly significant correlation between total nurses' knowledge and practice score and total self-care practices of the patients. 

Recommendations: Future studies should be done to evaluate the effect of discharge plan on self-care practices for patients post TKA.