The 6Cs of nursing is a healthcare strategy developed by the National Health Service (NHS) of England in 2012 as a response to declining quality of care and concerns about the lack of care and compassion between healthcare providers and staff to their patients. The strategy was first developed for nursing, care staff, and midwives, but has since been expanded to all staff including caterers, doctors, and chief executives. The 6Cs consist of care, compassion, courage, communication, commitment, and competence, making up the general strategy of Compassion in Practice. The aim was to implement these values into practice and interactions with patients, with support or actionable goals that various positions could act upon to enact the 6Cs (Baillie, 2017). The strategy has since seen tremendous success and been adopted in some form across the Commonwealth countries.
Surgery is often a highly invasive procedure which requires patients to experience challenging recoveries. There can be a range of complications ranging from discomfort and pain to more serious such as hemorrhage, infection, or venous thromboembolism. Post-op care generally requires greater attention to patients, focus on providing appropriate care (such as cleaning wound site, changing bandaging and catheter, and medication adherence, among others), and compassionate care as post-op patients are in a often in a more vulnerable and fragile state (Stephenson et al., 2020). The first aspect of care should be delivered as appropriate, ensuring that the patient is checked-up on and all procedures are done at the correct time. The concept of competence goes together with care, as competence in post-op care is critical often to ensure stable recovery and even safety of the patience. Competence in post-op care includes specific knowledge of the patient and their condition and risk factors, working proactively with the provider team to provide safe and high-quality care (Dahlberg et al., 2022).
Compassion in post-op care and management can take on many forms. Oftentimes, healthcare staff, including nurses, are highly overwhelmed. One way that compassion delivery can be optimized for health professionals is to take a targeted approach, meaning acknowledging the patient and their needs, and seek to focus their efforts on addressing the most important needs of the patient. The better these needs and expectations are met, the more it is generally correlated with increased satisfaction (Heinze et al., 2020). Compassion and subsequent satisfaction are important in post-op care, as it is associated with better patient outcomes and faster recovery and discharge.
Commitment in nursing is more abstract, commonly defined as both loyalty and responsibility to the profession as well as the commitment to provide optimal patient care. Due to the various complex nature of post-op care management, commitment is required, meaning that nurses cannot simply relax or let things go. With post-op patients, nurses must be in check, consistently providing monitoring, supportive care, and react to any arising complications based on their training and protocols regardless of any potential challenges that may arise. Finally, the last aspect is communication, which is critical at any stage of the healthcare process but hold significant importance for post-op care. When the nursing team is present, provides coherent information, and offers holistic communication, combining both technical knowledge and emotional support, patients report a feeling of being cared for and satisfaction in post-op (Sugai et al., 2013). Post-operative patient education and strong communication leads to better health outcomes such as lower pain scores and reducing the use of narcotics, along with faster recovery.
References
Baillie, L. (2017). An exploration of the 6Cs as a set of values for nursing practice.British Journal of Nursing, 26(10), 558–563. Web.
Dahlberg, K., Sundqvist, A.-S., Nilsson, U., & Jaensson, M. (2022). Nurse competence in the post-anaesthesia care unit in Sweden: A qualitative study of the nurse’s perspective.BMC Nursing, 21(1). Web.
Heinze, K., Suwanabol, P. A., Vitous, C. A., Abrahamse, P., Gibson, K., Lansing, B., & Mody, L. (2020). A survey of patient perspectives on approach to health care: Focus on physician competency and compassion.Journal of Patient Experience, 7(6), 1044-1053. Web.
Stephenson, C., Mohabbat, A., Raslau, D., Gilman, E., Wight, E., & Kashiwagi, D. (2020). Management of Common Postoperative Complications. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 95(11), 2540–2554. Web.
Sugai, D. Y., Deptula, P. L., Parsa, A. A., & Don Parsa, F. (2013). The importance of communication in the management of postoperative pain. Hawaii Journal of Medicine & Public Health, 72(6), 180–184. Web.