A Quality Improvement Evaluation of Patient Experience Through the Enhanced Recovery Program

The purpose of this project was to evaluate the effectiveness of adopting clinical care bundles for the enhanced recovery program (ERP) at the project site. The practice-focused questions explored whether care bundles from the enhanced recovery program (ERP) would achieve positive postoperative patient care experiences when compared to the traditional surgical care pathways. The concepts, models, method, and theories used for this project include the Iowa model, the plan-do-study-act model, lean methodology, Donabedian\u27s framework, and Watson\u27s theory of caring. The sources of evidence included the facility site analysis report to evaluate surgical inpatient complications, morbidity, and mortality rates. Over 100 items related to surgical postoperative inpatient details were retrieved from the facility site database. Using descriptive analysis of 31 postoperative surgical inpatients\u27 demographics, body mass index data, 30-day readmission, and comorbidities, the findings indicated that the ERP is an efficient, cost-effective program with positive postoperative inpatient outcomes in comparison to traditional surgical care pathways. The impact of the evaluation of the ERP predominately improves patient outcomes, which is a positive social change to postoperative inpatients, families, clinical staff, and the project site operational and clinical performance. The implications of this study for nursing practice and positive social change include standardization of quality and patient safety in a dynamic healthcare environment