Discharge Education for Pediatric Post-Operative Pain after Spinal Surgery

Background: Many pediatric orthopedic surgeries require legitimate opioid prescriptions for pain control, however caregivers report they do not have adequate discharge teaching. Integrating videos into discharge processes shows promise in increasing patient and caregiver comprehension and satisfaction of discharge education.: The purpose of this quality improvement project was to standardize discharge teaching by developing an educational video for caregivers on how to manage their child’s post-operative pain after spinal surgery.: An educational video was created and viewed by caregivers at the DNP project site. Outcomes were measured through brief questions asked to caregivers after viewing the video to assess understanding and preparedness to care for their child’s pain after discharge. A REDCap survey was given to staff nurses to assess video quality and ease of integration of the video into current the discharge process.: One hundred percent of caregivers (n=5) who responded to the questions after viewing the video felt more prepared to care for their child’s pain at home. REDCap survey results demonstrated 100% of nurses (n=15) felt that the video was easy to incorporate into the discharge process, 93.7% (n=15) felt more confident in their discharge teaching, and 86.6% (n=13) felt that the video was not too long. Video quality was deemed successful with a greater than 80% of quality indicators receiving a good or exceptional rating.: With the use of a patient education video, nurses felt more confident in their discharge teaching and caregivers felt more prepared to care for their child’s pain at home.