5Rs to Rescue
Phase 1
Family SuppleMented pAtient monitoRing afTEr suRgery (SMARTER) pilot trial.
Family members are necessary for patient care
5Rs to Rescue
Numbers Speak For Themselves
Can we train family carers to monitor basic vital signs to identify critically ill surgical patients?
Develop a Training and Support Intervention
We will test a task sharing intervention to train and support family carers in wards to measure and document vital signs. We will compare this to wards providing usual post-operative care. We aim to increase the frequency of documentation of vital signs in the first three days after surgery.
We will then evaluate compliance with the trial intervention, how medical and nursing staff respond to earlier detection of the deteriorating patient and how these change over the duration of the trial (feasibility outcome). We will also evaluate any effect on in-patient mortality.
Progress
We obtained ethical approval to carry out the SMARTER trial, which can be found here. We are currently reviewing the final draft manuscript for this trial and aim to submit it for publication in the next few months.
