![[ Visit Client Website ]](images/banner.gif)
Tuesday, November 3, 2009: 10:15 AM
Learning Objective 1: discuss the preoperative assessment and preparation of children with special health care needs.
Learning Objective 2: explain the need for global collaboration to advance evidence-based practice for children with special health care needs.
Preoperative assessment and preparation is necessary for the millions of children who undergo surgery each year. The purpose is to evaluate the child’s current health status, minimize risk through the identification and treatment of conditions that may influence surgery and anesthesia, formulate a plan of care, and psychologically prepare the child and family in order to provide the safest care. Many of the children who require surgery are children with special health care needs (CSHCN). CSHCN are “those who have or are at increased risk for a chronic physical, developmental, behavioral, or emotional condition and who also require health and related services of a type or amount beyond that required by children generally” (McPherson, Arango, Fox, et al, 1998). Surprisingly, little is known about the best practices for preoperative assessment and preparation of CSHCN. Challenged by the increasing number of CSHCN referred from a local, national, and international referral base, advanced practice nurses in a presurgical care center are attempting to develop an evidence-based practice. This presentation focuses on the preoperative assessment and preparation of children with special health care needs and their families, the efforts to create an evidence-based best practice that results in enhanced safety and outcomes, and the need for global collaboration to advance this initiative.
McPherson, M., Arango, P., Fox, H., Lauver, C., McManus, M., Newacheck, P. W., Perrin, J. M., Shonkoff, J. P., Strickland, B. (1998). A new definition of children with special health care needs. Pediatrics, 102, 137-140.