Nurse-led telephone follow-up according to the revised nursing outcomes classification for laryngeal carcinoma surgery patients: a randomized controlled trial

Background This study used the revised nursing outcomes classification (NOC) outlined in our previous study, "Core nursing outcomes for otorhinolaryngology head-neck," for telephone follow-up of patients who had laryngeal carcinoma surgery in China. This randomized controlled trial aimed to compare nurse-led telephone follow-up according to the revised NOC with traditional telephone follow-up. Methods A total of 100 postoperative patients were recruited from March 2018-March 2020. Patients were randomly assigned to nurse-led telephone follow-up groups as either revised NOC follow-up (n = 51) or traditional follow-up (n = 49). The investigated outcomes included nursing outcomes, quality of life, and self-care abilities. Results The baseline characteristics of patients were well balanced. We noted that improvements in nursing outcomes in the intervention group were significantly better than for those in the control group (P = 0.018), primarily regarding psychosocial health (P < 0.001) and health knowledge and behavior (P < 0.001). Moreover, patient outcomes in the intervention group were associated with greater improvements in quality of life than those in the control group (P < 0.001), especially for social conditions (P < 0.001), emotional health (P < 0.001), functional status (P < 0.001), and additional attention (P = 0.001). Finally, compared with the control group, significant improvements were observed in self-care abilities in the intervention group (P = 0.002), mainly regarding general self-care abilities (P = 0.016) and development self-care abilities (P < 0.001). Conclusion This study found that nurse-led telephone follow-up according to the revised NOC improved nursing outcomes, quality of life, and self-care abilities.