Nurses and physiotherapists' experience in mobilising postoperative orthopaedic patients with altered mental status: A phenomenological study.

BACKGROUND

A major goal of care for orthopaedic surgical patients is the achievement of their pre-morbid functional level or at least an improvement of their functional ability. However, patients with altered mental status can significantly impact this and other outcomes and influence the delivery of care. Patient mobilisation is a role shared by both nurses and physiotherapists.

AIMS

To enhance the understanding of nurses and physiotherapists' experience in mobilising postoperative orthopaedic patients with altered mental status.

METHOD

Three nurses and three physiotherapists were recruited using purposive sampling. Data was collected through interviews and analysed using Burnard's 14 stages of thematic content analysis.

RESULTS

Four main categories emerged from the study: altruism, interprofessional specialist practice, patient dynamics and challenges. Nurses and physiotherapists' experience have more similarities than differences under the four categories.

CONCLUSION

Nurses and physiotherapists experience numerous challenges from both patient and resources related factors such as environment, staffing and time limitations; safety risks to patient and staff; and communication barriers due to patient's altered mental state. While tensions and variations in priorities of care delivery exist between the two groups, interdisciplinary collaboration of both professional groups was clearly evident and enabled optimisation of mobilisation goals for this patient population and revealed more similarities than differences in their experience. Patient and staff safety takes precedence over mobilisation and safety risks in this patient group can be mitigated by adequate resources, competence, and teamwork.