The effect of preoperative education in postoperative activities of daily living and quality of life at patients with trochanteric femoral fracture treated with nailing

Aim: This paper is planned and applied as randomized controlled trial to determine the effect of preoperative education in postoperative activities of daily living and quality of life at patients with trochanteric femoral fracture treated with nailing. Materials and Methods: The study sample consists of the patients who are planned for nailing for trochanteric fracture and meets the study criteria; in a department of orthopaedics and traumatology in a education and research hospital in Izmir, between March 26, 2014 and July 11, 2014. 56 individual is included as 29 for intervention and 27 for control group. Ethics commitee approval and informed consent is obtained from patients, before the study. Data is collected by; face-to-face interviews, personal information form, Barthel Index (BI), Harris Hip Score (HHS) and Short Form Health Survey (SF-36). BI and SF-36 is applied to both groups, one day before the surgery. An education program that includes oral presentation and video display with visual materials is given one day before the surgery, in addition to rutine clinic education, for patients in intervention group. HHS, BI and SF-36 is applied again at first and third months postoperatively. Data is evaluated with descriptive statistics, Student t test, Mann Whitney U, Willcoxan signed rank test, repeated measures ANOVA, Friedman test and Chi-square test. Findings: Total HHS, BI and SF-36 scores at postoperative first and third months is higher ain interventation group than control group. Change over time is statistically significant between groups (p<0,05). Results: Study findings shows, preoperative education improves postoperative activities of daily living and quality of life at patients with trochanteric femoral fracture treated with nailing. Rutine preoperative patient education managed by nursing staff is recommended.