Decreasing the length of stay for persons undergoing total knee replacement surgery can improve patient and organizational outcomes while reducing health care costs. This integrative review examined selected nurse-driven variables that assist the interdisciplinary team to reduce length of stay. Findings suggest that a targeted clinical pathway including comprehensive preoperative patient education, physical therapy on the day of surgery, multimodal pain control, and proactive discharge planning may provide the best practice with this patient population.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.