Improving Health at Home Before an Operation: A Questionnaire Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Improving Health at Home Before an Operation: A Questionnaire Study of Patient Opinions on how to Improve Health Before Surgery.
IRAS ID
245904
Contact name
James Durrand
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 7 months, 31 days
Research summary
A number of unhealthy behaviours and health problems increase the risk of complications following surgery. Examples include: Smoking, being physically inactive, drinking more alcohol than is recommended, a low blood iron level, mild memory problems, being malnourished and the frailty that can develop with ageing. A complicated recovery from surgery leads to a greater risk of death, loss of independence and a poorer quality of life after surgery. Taking steps to address these issues before surgery and reduce risk is known as 'prehabilitation'.
Prehabilitation can be delivered in several of ways. For some patients, a face-to-face programme can be problematic or unappealing. An alternative is 'facilitated self-management' or a 'home based' approach. Prehabilitation activity is guided by staff from a distance. This may have several advantages including greater flexibility and reduced costs.
Little is known about patient preferences. The aim of this study is to identify, through an electronic questionnaire study, the patient selected attributes of an 'ideal' home-based self-management prehabilitation programme in terms of the design, delivery and management.
Adult patients attending surgical preassessment clinic (PAC) at NHS hospitals will be invited to participate by post alongside a participant information sheet. The informed consent process and questionnaire can be completed online independently or in person with a study team member at their clinic visit. The questionnaire will take up to 30 minutes and adapt to patient responses to obtain the most relevant information efficiently. This will establish patient preferences for each attribute of a programme and their relative importance. Participation ends with completion of the questionnaire. We aim to recruit 300 participants from multiple surgical specialties who will be non-identifiable.
The findings are intended to directly inform the development of new self-management prehabilitation tools for patients.
REC name
South Central - Hampshire B Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/SC/0038
Date of REC Opinion
19 Feb 2019
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion