Adjusted Nursing Workflow. Nurses were interviewed and asked to create a plan regarding how they could better incorporate ambulation into their daily workflow. Ambulation assessment was incorporated into the twice-per-shift recording of vital signs and patient safety assessment. This was recorded into the electronic health record at the same time as the patients’ vital signs. This allowed nurses to keep track of which patients would need extra assistance in ambulation and which patients were doing well on their own with the assistance of family. It also helped focus the resources of physical therapy and the single ambulation technician on the floor and to assist patients who needed more assistance.
Creation of Ambulation Encouragement Signs. The authors discovered that despite patients being told preoperatively about ambulation expectations, friends and family are not always included in these conversations. As nurses frequently cited both patients and family as reasons patients thought they should not walk, multiple signs inviting patients to take an active role in their recovery by ambulating were created and placed around the unit. The signs outlined the expectations of being out of bed and taking at least 1 step on the day of surgery and walking at least 4 times per day thereafter. In addition, we addressed frequently asked questions around issues such as walking with intravenous poles and urinary catheters. The posters were signed by all staff colorectal surgeons.
Results
Over the course of 7 months (June 2018 to December 2018), 253 postintervention patients were identified (Table 2). There was no difference between the pre-intervention group (n = 1762) and the postintervention group in terms of sex, race, origin, emergency status, operative time, and the majority of medical comorbidities (with the exception of smoking status and congestive heart failure). The postintervention group was slightly older (60 versus 57 years) and had a higher percentage of patients with an American Society of Anesthesiologists physical status score greater than 2 (66.8% versus 51.2%). The postintervention group also had higher rates of both malignancy (53.4% versus 33.3%) and inflammatory bowel disease (18.2% versus 14.4%).
The fidelity of the PDSA cycle was measured by pre-intervention and postintervention ambulation rates. Ambulation rates on POD 0, 1, and 2 improved from 36.4%, 47.3%, and 50.2% to 36.8%, 74.7%, and 82.6%, respectively (Table 3). The VTE rate decreased from 2.7% to 0.4% (P = 0.02), with 1 DVT and 0 PEs. It should be noted that the only patient who developed a VTE postintervention did not ambulate on PODs 0, 1, or 2.
Discussion
Postoperative VTE is a severe complication for postoperative colorectal surgery patients. Previous studies have demonstrated that increasing ambulation is associated with a lower rate of overall complications, and, when incorporated into a bundle, is associated with decreased rates of VTE.11,15 However, this is the first study to our knowledge demonstrating that creation of an ambulation protocol alone is associated with a decrease in VTE.