Therapeutic Education as a Safety Promotion Tool for Patiens on Oral Anticoagualtion Therapy

Our paper focused on clinical risk, looking at the epidemiology of adverse events, the systematic approach, the risk factors and at Reason’s model of organizational accidents to assess the efficacy of education in thepromotion of the safety of patients on Oral Anticoagulation Therapy (OAT).Purpose To study the level of patient satisfaction on oral anticoagulation therapy following nursing teachingsessions.Materials and Methods The teaching program was designed on the basis of the data collected fromspontaneous reporting of events correlated to the administration of Oral Anticoagulation Therapy.The surveyon these events was made by using a “Spontaneous incident reporting form” (GEN-DS-MD-scheda incidentreporting-00), integrated with the incident reporting systems already in place in the healthcare organisation.Patient satisfaction was measured by using a validated questionnaire.The experimentation of the teaching program involved 9 Units belonging to 5 Hospital Services of the LiguriaLocal Health Authority.Results Of the 222 patients attending the teaching sessions, 221 accepted to take part in the survey. Fifty-twopercent were women and the average age was 73.8 years (Standard Deviation 10.98) The average period oftreatment on oral anticoagulant drugs was about 5 years (61 months). Only the health centre in Voltri did nottake part in our survey.The respondents who managed to answer the questionnaire on their own were 163(73.8%). All the participants rated the teaching program positively (55% said it was good, 45% said it wasexcellent).The working Group who prepared the information booklet included mainly information that wouldhad a positive impact on the patients’ lives.Conclusions Interestingly, this population mainly included individuals who had been on OAT for more thanone year (on average 61 months). Our results showed that participants had understood the usefulness of theinformation they had received.