Clinicians consistently exceed a typical person's short-term memory during preoperative teaching.
BACKGROUND
Patient education is a critical part of preparation for surgery. Little research on provider-to-patient teaching has been conducted with systematic focus on the quantity of information provided to patients. This is important to assess because short-term memory capacity for information such as preoperative instruction is limited to roughly seven units of content.


METHODS
We studied the information-giving practices of anesthesiologists and nurse practitioners during preoperative teaching by examining transcripts from 26 tape recorded preoperative evaluation appointments. We developed a novel coding system to measure: 1) quantity of information, 2) frequency of medical terminology, 3) number of patient questions, and 4) number of memory reinforcements used during the consultation. Results are reported as mean +/- sd.


RESULTS
Anesthesiologists and nurse practitioners vastly exceeded patients' short-term memory capacity. Nurse practitioners gave significantly more information to patients than did physicians (112 +/- 37 vs 49 +/- 25 items per interview, P < 0.01). This higher level of information-giving was not influenced by the question-asking behaviors of the patients. Nurse practitioners and physicians used similar numbers of medical terms (4.0 +/- 2.4 vs 3.7 +/- 2.8 explained terms per interview), and memory-supporting reinforcements (2.3 +/- 3.0 vs 1.4 +/- 2.0 reinforcements per interview).


CONCLUSIONS
Given the known limits of short-term memory, clinicians would be well advised to carefully consider their patterns of information-giving and their use of memory-reinforcing strategies for critical information.
Sandberg
Elisabeth H
EH
Department of Psychology, Suffolk University, Boston, MA 02114, USA. elisabeth.sandberg@suffolk.edu
Sharma
Ritu
R
Wiklund
Richard
R
Sandberg
Warren S
WS
D000776:Anesthesiology / Q000379:methods*; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001519:Behavior; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D009722:Nurse Practitioners; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D010820:Physicians; D012017:Referral and Consultation; D013663:Teaching