Take A Couple Tylenol And Call Me In The Morning
Who hasn't heard this age-old adage used to describe healthcare from many years ago?! It turns out this wise advice from years gone by can still be applicable today…. but with a slightly different twist! We have observed for some time that Tylenol administered through an IV before surgery can reduce discomfort in the recovery area, but due to limited availability and often cost prohibitive expense to purchase the product it is a well-known challenge in the surgery world to provide the medication for patients consistently and affordably.
We are truly dedicated to high quality outcomes at an affordable price to our patients, so we are never satisfied and continually looking for evidence based ways to improve our patient's surgical experience.
Since our small and intimate clinical team specializes in certain procedures, we are poised to create and efficiently adopt new opportunities to improve specific patient experiences.
So, our quality team of surgeons, nurses, surgical technicians and anesthesiologists set out a while back to find a consistent way to reduce discomfort in the recovery area without adding expense to our patients. Using all of the information and literature available for the effects of IV Tylenol on patient discomfort, we decided to administer Tylenol by mouth before surgery for all of our gallbladder patients to determine if it would have a similar effect to the IV version…AND…
We were absolutely blown away by the results!! No surgery is free of discomfort, but immediately we noticed a difference in our gallbladder patients in the recovery area. They had less discomfort, so they required less IV narcotic medication. Since they didn't need as much IV pain medication, they seemed to experience significantly less nausea in recovery. They were up and moving around sooner and the sooner we can get a patient up to walk after surgery the sooner they start to feel better. It was a true patient win, win… win!
At the conclusion of the extensive year-long study reviewed by AAAHC our quality team adopted a protocol to administer Tylenol by mouth before surgery for a variety of surgical procedures!
Now you know why you were given or might be given a "couple of Tylenol" before surgery at CSA Surgical Center… and the day after surgery, we will "call you in the morning!"
Blog post written by: Lisa Leathers
Administrator/Director of Nursing, CSA Surgical Center
