EFFECT OF APPLING A DEVELOPED SAFE DISCHARGE SCALE FROM THE RECOVERY ROOM ON THE INCIDENCE OF IMMEDIATE COMPLICATIONS FOLLOWING MAJOR ABDOMINAL SURGERY

Noura Ebraheem Ahmad, Noura Ahmad*, D. R. Mazen Haidar and D. R Ali Alloush

ABSTRACT

Focus on specialized nursing care during the immediate postoperative recovery period is the recognition that mortality can be prevented and complications managed. Many systems and scales have been used to assess the patient's health status and vital readiness for discharge from the recovery room to other surgical departments. However, most of those scales did not include sufficient vital signs and were not well defined, leaving them open to broad interpretation and increased variability between observers. Objective: Determine the effect of implementing a developed scale for safe discharge from the recovery room on immediate complications following major abdominal surgery. Tools and methods: The research was conducted on a sample of 100 patients in the recovery room and the departments of general surgery, urology, vascular and gynecology at Tishreen University Hospital, divided equally into two groups, so that a developed scale was applied to 50 patients in the experimental group, and 50 patients in the control group were left to the hospital routine. Direct complications occurring in patients in the control and experimental sample were evaluated 24 hours after the surgery, and three developed tools were used: the demographic and biometric data form, the direct complications form after surgery, and the scale developed by the researcher based on previous references and literature and the consensus of experts in this field. Results: The results showed the effectiveness of applying the developed scale, as the incidence of all complications, including nausea, vomiting, pain, hypothermia, cardiac and renal disorders, bleeding and gas retention, decreased significantly in the experimental group compared to patients in the control group who were left to the hospital routine. Conclusions: The study data suggest that the application of the improved scale in the recovery room contributes to reducing the incidence of direct complications following major abdominal surgery.

Keywords: Safe discharge scale, complications, major abdominal surgery.