Background

As part of our continuous performance enhancement projects in our American College of Surgeons MBSAQIP program we developed a 27 question quiz. We wanted to use this to determine if patients are improving their basic nutrition understanding with a goal of improving long term success with weight maintenance.

Methods

We began distributing a quiz at initial office visit for patients coming in for consultation with a bariatric surgeon at our multi-disciplinary program in May of 2021. We then gave patients that completed the preoperative process the same quiz at pre-admission testing.

Results

268 patients completed their initial quiz. The average score was 76%. 99 patients completed a postoperative quiz with an average score of 87%. Of these 99 patients, we had both pre and postoperative quizzes in 73 patients. The test scores improved by 11%. 44 out of 73 patients score above the average and 29 patients scored below the average of 87% correct answers.

Conclusions

After completion of a preoperative process, patients answered three more questions correctly. The next steps are to compare weight loss between the groups to identify if higher score on preoperative nutrition quiz correlates with improved weight loss.