Nurses can carry out preoperative assessment

Appropriately trained nurses are no worse than preregistration house officers in assessing patients before elective surgery. In a randomised controlled trial Kinley and colleagues (p 1323) compared preoperative assessment carried out by nurses with that carried out by house officers. They found few differences in history taken and physical examinations, but house officers ordered substantially more unnecessary tests, which has economic implications. Reforms in postgraduate medical training and the introduction of reduced working hours have increased pressure to substitute non-medical staff for preregistration house officers. The authors conclude that there is no contraindication to the development of nurse led preoperative assessment, although house officers will have to continue to undertake some of the work to satisfy training requirements.

(Credit: PHANIE/REX)

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Relevant Article

Effectiveness of appropriately trained nurses in preoperative assessment: randomised controlled equivalence/non-inferiority trial

Helen Kinley, Carolyn Czoski-Murray, Steve George, Chris McCabe, John Primrose, Charles Reilly, Richard Wood, Paula Nicolson, Caroline Healy, Susan Read, John Norman, Ellen Janke, Hameed Alhameed, Nick Fernandes, and Eileen Thomas
BMJ 2002 325: 1323. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]