PATIENT CARE PROCESS AND INFORMATION FLOW IN OUTPATIENT SURGERY

摘要

Patient care transitions have been shown to be critical points at which failure as well as recovery from potential failure may occur. The purpose of this research is to identify transitions in patient care and the flow of information for different steps of the outpatient surgery preoperative care process and, in turn, identify breakdowns in the process of the information flow and their consequences. A study of one hospital's preoperative process in outpatient surgery was conducted. The design of this study involved four data collection methods to gather data on preoperative work processes: employee shadowing, patient shadowing, clinic observation, and dictated feedback from midlevel providers. Various facilitators and obstacles of information flow were found to be present in the preoperative care process that affected the flow of patient information and resulted in negative consequences for healthcare providers and patients.