A comparison of two educational interventions for the cognitive empowerment of ambulatory orthopaedic surgery patients

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the cognitive empowerment of ambulatory orthopaedic Surgery patients when using Internet-based education (experiment) in contrast to face to face education conducted by a nurse (control). Methods: Elective ambulatory orthopaedic surgery patients were randomized to either all experiment group (n = 72) receiving Internet-based education, or to a control group (n = 75) receiving face-to-face education with a nurse. The data were collected at three different time points: before the preoperative education session, after preoperative education and 2 weeks after the operation. Three structured instruments were used: the Knowledge Test, the Sufficiency of Knowledge and the Orthopaedic Patient Knowledge Instrument. Results: Patients in both groups showed improvement in their knowledge. However, patients who received Internet-based education improvement in their knowledge level significantly more in the ethical (p = 0.005) and functional (p = 0.023) dimensions and also in total (p = 0.033) than those patients who underwent face-to-face education with a nurse. In addition, patients in the experiment group had higher scores in sufficiency of knowledge in the experiential (p = 0.050) and financial (p = 0.048) dimensions and, moreover, their scores in sufficiency of knowledge in the ethical dimension improved significantly more (p = 0.008) during the study period than patients in the control group. Conclusion: Improvements in the Patients' level and sufficiency of knowledge within both groups indicates an increase in patients' cognitive empowerment. Practice implications: Internet-based education call be used in ambulatory orthopaedic surgery patient education for increasing patients' cognitive empowerment. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.