Background

Purpose: No criteria or data was found in regard to postoperative voiding requirements for bariatric patients going home the same day of surgery. The aim of this project was to determine if sending patients home without voiding postoperatively would result in positive outcomes. Participants and Setting: The setting for this quality improvement project was a 636 bed academic medical center in Texas. Data was collected from 1 surgeon patient population before expanding to 3 surgeons comprising the entire center’s bariatric same day surgery population.

Methods

Data was collected to determine any urinary complications postoperatively following same day bariatric surgery in patients who did not void in the hospital setting.

Results

Patients originally scheduled to go home the same day of surgery but required admission due to not meeting home criteria guidelines were evaluated. 60 percent of those admissions were due to the patient not voiding postoperatively. *There was no statistical significance noted in postoperative urinary complications when sending home patients prior to voiding postoperatively.

Conclusions

Discharge criteria for same-day bariatric surgery has now been changed to remove the postoperative void requirement after surgery. The implementation of interventions identified as best practices through clinical nurses’ affiliation with ASMBS and TABS resulted in a 16% overall decrease in overnight admission secondary to urinary retention from October 2021 to January 2022.