Mapping patient education encounters in elective surgery: a cohort study and cross-sectional survey.

Objective: Develop a process map of when patients learn about their proposed surgery and what resources patients use to educate themselves.

Design: A mixed methods design, combining semistructured stakeholder interviews, quantitative validation using electronic healthcare records (EHR) in a retrospective cohort and a cross-sectional patient survey.

Setting: A single surgical centre in the UK.

Participants: Fourteen members of the spinal multidisciplinary team were interviewed to develop the process map.This process map was validated using the EHR of 50 patients undergoing elective spine surgery between January and June 2022. Postprocedure, feedback was gathered from 25 patient surveys to identify which resources they used to learn about their spinal procedure. Patients below the age of 18 or who received emergency surgery were excluded.

Interventions: Elective spine surgery and patient questionnaires given postoperatively either on the ward or in follow-up clinic.

Primary and secondary outcome measures: The primary outcome was the percentage of the study cohort that was present at encounters on the process map. Key timepoints were defined if >80% of patients were present. The secondary outcome was the percentage of the study cohort that used educational resources listed in the patient questionnaire.

Results: There were 342 encounters which occurred across the cohort, with 16 discrete event categories identified. The initial surgical clinic (88%), anaesthetic preoperative assessment (96%) and admission for surgery (100%) were identified as key timepoints. Surveys identified that patients most used verbal information from their surgeon (100%) followed by written information from their surgeon (52%) and the internet (40%) to learn about their surgery.

Conclusions: Process mapping is an effective method of illustrating the patient pathway. The initial surgical clinic, anaesthetic preoperative assessment and surgical admission are key timepoints where patients receive information. This has future implications for guiding patient education interventions to focus at key timepoints.