Comfort Provisions (Behavioral Response to Procedure)

Guidelines:

• Provide comfort measures/provisions to optimize behavioral responses to the surgical procedure
  • Physiological
  • Psychosocial
  • Spiritual
• Patients can experience preoperative stress, intraoperative discomfort, and problems with postoperative recovery, some of which can be addressed with complementary care interventions, or comfort provisions

Considerations:

• Physiologic responses to experience
• Preoperative patient preparation activities
• Patient’s rights
• Role as patient advocate
• Pain/comfort measures
• Environmental factors

Nurse’s role:

• Apply the nursing process:
  • Assessment
  • Risk or actual problem identification
  • Outcome Identification
  • Planning
  • Interventions
  • Evaluation (Continual)
• Select individualized comfort provisions based on information obtained from nursing assessment
• Adjust comfort provisions based on patient’s response and evaluation of the desired outcomes

Pitfalls:

• Patient care should honor patient’s values, beliefs, and experiences
• Comfort provisions should be individualized
• Anxiety should be assessed and appropriate/effective comfort provisions identified
• Comfort provisions may need to be modified or discontinued with changes in patient condition

Examples:

• Comfort provisions used in the perioperative setting may include:
  • Supportive education
  • Dietary and herbal interventions
  • Music interventions
  • Stress diversion and visualization
  • Aromatherapy
  • Acupoint interventions
  • Massage, reflexology, electrical stimulation, and biofield interventions

Linchpins (Key Points):

• Interdisciplinary team approach
• Collaborate with patient/family
• Apply the nursing process
• Continual evaluation, modify as needed