The impact of postoperative nursing care applied by remote video call and telephone monitoring methods of the patient undergoing breast cancer surgery on pain, on quality of life,on arm, shoulder, hand mobility and on postoperative complication development: Randomized controlled study

Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the effect of postoperative nursing care applied to a patient who underwent breast cancer surgery with remote video calling and telephone monitoring methods on pain, quality of life, arm, shoulder, and hand mobility, and the development of postoperative complications. Materials and Method: The study was planned as a single-center and experimental study. It was conducted between September 1, 2021 and February 31, 2023 in the general surgery ward of Adnan Menderes University Hospital. The sample size was determined as 57 in total by calculating the effect size (d) 0.40, power (1-β) 0.80 and 80% confidence interval with the "G. Power-3.1" package program. Patients were randomly assigned to the groups. The study patients were divided into 3 groups and the study was completed with 90 patients. Results: It was determined that there was no statistically significant difference between the postoperative nursing care applied with remote video call, telephone monitoring and clinical monitoring methods on VAS, and the mean scores of arm, shoulder, hand mobility, quality of life and postoperative complication development in the remote video call and telephone monitoring group patients were lower than the control group patients. Conclusion: There was no significant difference in the level of pain between the groups (p>0.05), but postoperative nursing care with remote video calling and telephone monitoring was effective in reducing quality of life, arm, shoulder, and hand mobility, and postoperative complications in patients followed up with remote video calling, telephone monitoring, and clinical follow-up. Keywords: Nursing, Lymphedema, Breast Neoplasia, Remote Nursing, Quality of Life