Enhance the quality of your RCN's contribution to patient care - we want your views

Published: 03 August 2012

Enhanced recovery, often referred to as rapid recovery, is a new, evidence-based model of care that creates fitter patients who recover faster from major surgery.

It is the modern way for treating patients where day surgery is not appropriate. The Enhanced Recovery programme, from the Department of Health NHS Improvement programme, is about improving patient outcomes and speeding up a patient's recovery after surgery. It has obvious and significant benefits for both patients and staff.

The programme focuses on making sure that patients are active participants in their own recovery process; it also aims to ensure that patients always receive evidence based care at the right time.
 
Outcomes of the enhanced recovery programme are:

The RCN Cancer and Breast Care Forum committee will be sending a representative to this meeting and so we would welcome your thoughts and opinions about surgical patient pathways and enhanced recovery outcomes, including your patients' experience of this having breast reconstruction or surgery to remove cancers.

We would also like to hear about the current concerns or complications which you might have experienced if currently using the principles of enhanced recovery?

Some of the feedback we have received so far includes the need to be mindful that  breast patients undergoing complex surgery such as reconstruction have undergone long, often quite ambitious surgery, which is likely to use implants or transfer tissue from other parts of the body, thus there is a danger of implant infection among other complications.

We also recognise that great care should be given with tight guidelines regarding when those ladies who have such interventions are allowed home to decrease their post-operative sense of vulnerability.

Comments on this matter can be emailed to our representative at the meeting, Lorraine Turner.