Standardized Postoperative Cardiac Surgery Educational Process: Improving Family-Centered Care

Background: Sustaining an environment that incorporates quality and family-centered care requires attention to improvements that encourage family participation in patient care. Educating families occurs in a high-stress environment without regard to their health literacy level, and as a result, leads to repetitive questions and a lack of confidence. Design: This quality improvement intervention was aimed at standardizing postoperative education for pediatric patients and their families. Intervention: The intervention developed a standardized education process to improve the family's knowledge and confidence to provide care for their child. Outcomes: Findings indicated the process improved the family's identification of medical devices and increased parental confidence that led to an increase in family participation with daily needs. Conclusions: Providing families with education using an educational handout, including a pictorial image and written text, can bridge the literacy and knowledge gap between families and health care providers with postoperative cardiac patients. Key Words: Cardiac, surgery, patient education, family-centered care.