The Effect of Critical Pathway Care in Patients With Colorectal Cancer, Randomized Control Trials

Colorectal cancer and its treatment have short-term and long-term side effects for patients. One of the factors affecting these side effects is the nursing care method. This study was conducted to determine the effect of care based on the critical pathway on the duration of hospitalization, complications of the disease, and satisfaction with nursing care in patients with colorectal cancer. In a cluster-randomized controlled trial study, 70 patients with colorectal cancer were randomly selected from two hospitals of OMID (N=35) and GHAEM (N=35) in Mashhad, Iran. They were assigned to intervention and control groups. The data were collected using a characteristic of patients, and satisfaction questioner, a checklist of patient status and nursing performance, and analyzed by SPSS software version 18. There was a significant difference in the mean of satisfaction of patients from nursing care and length of hospital stay between pathway and routine care group (P<0.001). There were no significant differences between pathway and routine for the postoperative complications after 12 weeks of follow-up. Our study indicates that critical pathway care can increase the satisfaction of patients and decrease the duration of hospitalization. Future studies should investigate how to increase other clinical outcomes in the oncology wards.