Optimising Post-Operative Care

This 45 minute eCPD tutorial focuses on how you as a veterinary nurse within general practice can provide the best possible post-operative care for patients following surgery and during discharge.

The first part of the tutorial will look at effective post-operative care – this is very important in securing a healthy patient and ensuring the best possible outcome. There are many things that you can do to ensure this happens – providing clear and concise handovers from theatre to kennel to discharge, utilising guidelines and routines which can be easily followed to enable your patient to recover from an anaesthetic quickly, and discussing post-operative care that can be continued by the owner at home..

Communication and owner compliance is often the key to ensuring a healthy patient and without this, a patient’s recovery time may be delayed. Recognising the responsibilities of each staff member and also the owner during this period, can ensure that all areas are covered and nothing is missed. The use of post-operative paperwork and how you can create this can also be another way of keeping up to date with everything. Throughout this tutorial we will look at all aspects of post-operative care and discuss in detail the observations we should be making and the procedures we should be following to ensure the correct outcome..

The second part of the tutorial will look at what we can do for our patients and owners once the patient is discharged. This will include looking at the correct discharge procedure and how we can ensure our clients receive the best possible care. We will then look at the next step in recovery, including hydrotherapy, physiotherapy and mobility clinics and how each one can be delivered effectively. Finally we will discuss wound care, including the signs that owners should be looking for, and when they should return to the surgery.