Managing Post-Operative Conditions

Providing authentic didactic and clinical learning experiences that involve the management of post-operative conditions is a challenge for academic and clinical faculty alike. Even for a well-designed and well-resourced education program, it is difficult to provide students with consistent quality patient/client encounters that involve post-surgical conditions during clinical education. While these experiences can and do happen, often by chance encounters, not all students may have the same depth and breadth of educational opportunity. Further, providing students with a trusted and reliable source of information that is useful, cost-effective, easily accessible and one that covers contemporary surgical techniques and rehabilitation protocols is daunting.  

The Post-Op App

To address these challenges, and to provide faculty and students with up to date information on the surgical intervention and post-operative rehabilitation protocol for 25 common musculoskeletal conditions, the team at ATu has designed and released the new Post-Op app as an easy to use reference guide.

The app covers seven body regions including four upper extremity regions (Head & Neck; Shoulder & Arm; Back; Elbow, Forearm, Wrist & Hand) and three lower extremity regions (Buttock, Hip & Thigh; Knee; Leg, Ankle & Foot).  Each body region currently includes 2-5 conditions which commonly require surgical intervention and a post-operative rehabilitation protocol.

Overview of Common Surgical Techniques

Each condition includes a brief text description and image of the surgical technique.  For example, the surgical overview of a bunionectomy includes the following description and image.

Sequentially Phased Rehabilitation Protocols

Following the overview of the surgical technique, a sequentially phased post-operative rehabilitation protocol is provided.  Each phase of the protocol includes a typical timeframe to complete the phase, the patient-centered goals of the phase, common problems that may be experienced during the phase (along with suggested interventions to address each problem), any patient precautions to be aware of during the phase, and finally objective and subjective criteria for progression to the next phase of the rehabilitation protocol.  For example, the progressive loading/strengthening phase (Phase 2) following a lumbar fusion is provided here.

Providing Patient/Client-Centered Education

Finally, and most importantly, multiple patient education sections are interwoven throughout each surgical overview and each phase of the corresponding post-operative rehabilitation protocol. These sections include lists of common patient-generated questions and appropriate clinician responses.  While these Q&A sections can be used to help students learn to communicate effectively and appropriately with their patients/clients, by using the Resource sidebar, this information can also be directly shared with the patient and/or their family member via email to encourage compliance and participation in their own care and recovery.  For example, the following shows the patient education section from Phase 4 of the Rotator Cuff Repair - Advanced Strengthening and Dynamic Stability.

To explore the Post-Op app and many more e-learning apps and simulations, sign up for your free faculty access and start transforming your classroom with ATu today!