Prehabilitation programmes are preparation for surgery and other treatments and have been shown to have a major impact on patient outcomes.

Prehabilitation complements the MECC (Make Every Contact Count Approach), which focuses on taking the opportunity to have conversations about ways to improve health and wellbeing when engaging with patients. 

This includes lifestyle interventions that are well known to and used by nurses, such as smoking cessation, healthy lifestyles and psychological support strategies.

Often we feel helpless to support our patients when they are awaiting surgery or have just had a devastating cancer diagnosis.

Prehabilitation is designed to overcome this and give the health and social care teams practical tools to help the patient be as mentally and as physically healthy as they can be before they start any treatment.

This course is intended for health and social care teams, specifically those in the nursing workforce.

It is short and flexible, you can do the activities all at once or work your way through them in short manageable chunks that fit in around your busy working day.

You will be able to download a certificate to show that you have completed the course.

The RCN values your feedback on our courses and an evaluation form is available at the end of the course which for you to complete. We use your feedback to improve our educational resources.

Contributors 

The RCN "Introduction to Prehabilitation", has been developed originally in collaboration with Dr Pawan Randev, GP Cancer Lead, East Midlands and Janet Duffin, Senior Quality Improvement Manager, East Midlands Cancer Alliance. 

We'd also like to thank Heather Mackinnon, PhD, Fit4Surgery Prehabilitation Project Manager, for recording the podcast: Benefits of Prehabilitation -  from a Health care worker’s perspective. 

The RCN resource lead is Heather Randle RCN UK Head of Education, the following roles were contacted to support the review:  

Andrea Childe RCN  Professional Lead Education  

Lena Davies RCN Senior Digital Learning Designer  

Amy Tank RCN Information Manager 

Caitlin Willis RCN Scotland Learning & Development Officer professional Practice   

Ruth Thompson RCN Northern Ireland Associate Director   

Nicola Davis-Job RCN Wales Acute Care and Leadership Adviser   

Kim Ball RCN Professional Lead Primary Care  

Sarah Winfield-Davies RCN Lead Nurse Independent Health and Social Care Southwest Region 

Outcome

To be able to apply some of the key principles of prehabilitation to those to whom you deliver care. This includes lifestyle interventions that are well known to and used by health and social care teams, such as smoking cessation, healthy lifestyles and psychological support strategies