Patient Warming Plays a Significant Role in Patient Satisfaction, Clinical Outcomes

Feeling Cold a Top Concern

Patients may not be well versed in the science or methods behind a particular surgery, but they can easily assess whether or not they were comfortable while receiving care and how they felt about the experience. They will remember if they were too cold or too hot, if the bed was uncomfortable or the food unappealing. They’ll also remember feeling overly nervous, exposed, anxious or vulnerable, and such feelings may affect how they feel about — and how they rate — their provider or healthcare facility.

So it’s little surprise that when surveyed, nurses cited warmth most often (33.3 percent) as the top patient comfort concern, followed by pain management (18.3 percent) and patient positioning (12.2 percent).⁷

Shivering occurs in approximately 40 percent to 60 percent of all unwarmed patients recovering from general anesthesia.⁸ However, if shivering is caused by cold, only active warming will bring relief and protect the patient from the potential consequences of unintended hypothermia.

Thermal comfort is significantly greater in patients who are actively warmed than in patients who are not.⁹ Research conducted in 2001 revealed that none of the actively warmed patients in the study verbalized being cold and 66 percent reported a score of “most comfortable” on the comfort scale.⁹

These results underscore the need for active warming interventions — not simply in the clinical context in maintaining normothermia, but also as a means of increasing overall patient comfort in the perianesthesia setting.⁷