Abstract

Background:  Accurate pre-operative evaluation can have an effective role in preventing many adverse effects of surgery in the elderly people. Without doubt, this requires having committed, skilled, and experienced nurses in the field of surgery and operating room. Evidence suggests that health care providers, such as nurses, do not have adequate ability to diagnose the problems of the elderly people in the surgical units, despite increasing physical and mental needs of the elderly people. The objective of this study was to evaluate the level of observing the care standard principles in the elderly admitted to the operating room of the Iran University of Medical Sciences in 2017-2018. The current research was a cross-sectional study conducted since March 2017 to August 2018 at the educational hospitals of Iran University. Methods and Materials:  In this research, 151 elderly people who were candidate for surgery and aged 60 years and over participated in this study by using convenient sampling method. The data collection tool included a researcher-developed checklist, which its validity was confirmed through content validity and its reliability was confirmed through simultaneous observation of the researcher and calculation of the correlation coefficient of the scores. In this research, standard cares specified in the checklist were compared with cases recorded in the patients' medical file. The data were analyzed using spss21 software. Results: The results revealed that 69 (45.7%) of the participants in this study were male and 82 (54.3%) were female and 51.7% of them suffered from cardiovascular diseases. In comparing the cases recorded in the medical file with the cased completed in the checklist by the researcher, the highest difference was obtained in skin diseases (73.4% difference) and the lowest difference was related to the diabetes disease (3.85% difference). In general, there was a 16.7% difference between the cases recorded in the medical file and the cases completed on the checklist by the researcher. Conclusion: Based on the results of current research, there is a relatively large difference between pre-operative cares provided for the elderly people and the standards in this area, especially in cases such as skin care. Thus, it is recommended to pay more attention to the care of the elderly people in the surgical units and the medical team to receive the necessary trainings on the special needs of the elderly people who are candidate for surgery. Serious monitoring and training for the care team should be considered before the surgery.