Yoeri Bemelmans

Patient information in knee arthroplasty 27 2 Several studies [12,17] examined the patients’ needs regarding perioperative information. They concluded that patients need information on the healthcare specialists, postoperative care, recovery and medication. Especially information on medication (e.g. expected levels of pain, medication use, side-effects) was found to be of major importance, which is in line with the presented opinions and recommendations by the patients in the current study. The points for improvement to increase readability (e.g. table of content, figure/image resolution), are also in line with other studies. As stated by other authors, these aspects regarding design are of major importance (e.g. letter type, letter size, paragraph usage) [6,7,9,20]. With the introduction of applications and websites, the availability of information increased. Despite great advantages of this freely available information, concerns regarding the reliability and variability are present [4]. Although patients reported less need for additional applications or websites, patients reported the size of the brochure as a limitation, in which an application could be more tailored towards the patient’s wishes regarding size. Another major advantage would be the ease to change and manage information. For example, patients reported that the given information was outdated on the postoperative visits in the hospital. This study has several limitations. The sample might be biased because all participants stated that they were satisfied with their overall treatment process. To extract more insight in adverse experiences, the cohort should ideally include dissatisfied patients as well. Furthermore, it is to be expected to gain more data saturation in a larger cohort of patients. The next step should be to improve information brochures (or other material) by involving the patients (and other users) in the development process (co-creation). Conclusion In conclusion, patients rated the information brochure on KA surgery as good and recommended its use. The reported opinions on content (e.g. wound healing, pain experiences, exercise intensity build-up, usage of walking aids) and formal requirement (e.g. table of content, size) were used to improve the brochure.