Prewarming patients for surgery ( Research)
Pre-warming patients to prevent hypothermia in recovery: A literature review
Every day patients undergo surgery with general anesthesia for simple procedures like hernia repairs or breast biopsies. Loved ones are escorted into cold preoperative areas where nurses have them remove every stitch of their own clothing and replace them with a chilly, threadbare piece of fabric which ties together a handful of times and falls, for most, to the knees at best. The preoperative nurse then has them lie supine onto a cart that has meager, scratchy sheets only to add room temperature fluid to an intravenous line catheter that feeds into an extremity. The patients are now exposed to the trifecta; convection, conduction and evaporation, cooling their external peripherals, slowly dropping their internal body temperature, the only comfort is a blanket which has been sitting in this room for hours before now. We nurses rush to ready the patient for the next surgery and to prepare the room for the physician’s needs when s/he arrives, tests must be ran, and results received, seldom do we stop to consider the consequences of preoperative hypothermia in patients. As nurses our job is to advocate, assure, and comfort our patients during this process. Nurses can understand the anxiety that patients experience while awaiting the unknown. Each step taken to prepare a patient for surgery must be critically assessed and adjusted to prevent the onset of hypothermia preoperatively and complications postoperatively. While working in surgery for over 13 years I have witnessed complications of unintentional hypothermia such as excessive blood loss, shivering, cardiac issues, and/or a slow respiratory recovery and continued used of the ventilator while waking from anesthesia. A clear understanding of how unintentional hypothermia can effect your patients and the protocols put forth to prevent it stem from a formidable report by the Institute of Medicine in
Every day patients undergo surgery with general anesthesia for simple procedures like hernia repairs or breast biopsies. Loved ones are escorted into cold preoperative areas where nurses have them remove every stitch of their own clothing and replace them with a chilly, threadbare piece of fabric which ties together a handful of times and falls, for most, to the knees at best. The preoperative nurse then has them lie supine onto a cart that has meager, scratchy sheets only to add room temperature fluid to an intravenous line catheter that feeds into an extremity. The patients are now exposed to the trifecta; convection, conduction and evaporation, cooling their external peripherals, slowly dropping their internal body temperature, the only comfort is a blanket which has been sitting in this room for hours before now. We nurses rush to ready the patient for the next surgery and to prepare the room for the physician’s needs when s/he arrives, tests must be ran, and results received, seldom do we stop to consider the consequences of preoperative hypothermia in patients. As nurses our job is to advocate, assure, and comfort our patients during this process. Nurses can understand the anxiety that patients experience while awaiting the unknown. Each step taken to prepare a patient for surgery must be critically assessed and adjusted to prevent the onset of hypothermia preoperatively and complications postoperatively. While working in surgery for over 13 years I have witnessed complications of unintentional hypothermia such as excessive blood loss, shivering, cardiac issues, and/or a slow respiratory recovery and continued used of the ventilator while waking from anesthesia. A clear understanding of how unintentional hypothermia can effect your patients and the protocols put forth to prevent it stem from a formidable report by the Institute of Medicine in