THE INCREASE OF PATIENT INDEPENDENCE IN HOSPITAL

Abstract

Introduction: Increasing the level of our patients’ independence is a constant premise in the execution of our care and also has served as the basis for some of the theories that have given form to our conceptual framework. The target of our work is to determine how the patients' level of independence changes after a period of hospital stay. Methodology: Descriptive and analytic study. The reference population is the patients entered in the Hospital of Montilla, Córdoba included in the assistance processes of the Medical or Orthopedic Departments. Results: We made a hypothesis contrast to check if there were statistically significant differences among the Barthel scale at hospital check in and the Barthel scale at hospital check out. We used the parametric test of the t of Student for paired groups. The level of independence increases as much in the patients included in the assistance processes of Medical Department (5.93 IC 95 %: 3.64-8.22; p<0.0005) as Orthopedic Department (18.69 IC 95 %: 14.06-23.32; p<0.0005). In Medical processes, the increase of the independence is greater when the patients' stay is longer (although the correlation is weak). Discussion: We review the results of diverse studies that have studied the dependency-independence of patients in diverse contexts: Hospitals, Nursing Units, and Geriatric Centers. Palabras clave: Enfermera, independencia, actividades básicas de la vida diaria, investigación de resultados en salud, hospital