Nursing care of patients with surgery of the chest.

In summary, care of the thoracic patient encompasses three major periods: the preoperative phase in which diagnostic evaluation of the patient is the important concern of the physician but in which patient education, establishment of rapport, and anxiety alleviation or "morale boosting" become the chief responsibility of the nursing staff; the operative period, in which technical skill and operative efficiency by all members of the thoracic team functioning as a unit become the most important considerations; and the postoperative period in which careful and vigilant monitoring of vital signs becomes the most important function of the nursing staff. The major portion of responsibility for effective action in the face of pathological alteration of patient physiology depends, of course, on the physician, but he is heavily dependent upon the data on the patient's physiological state obtained by the nursing staff during this period.