Ward nurses-focused educational intervention improves the quality of bowel preparation in inpatients undergoing colonoscopy: A CONSORT-compliant randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Adequate bowel preparation is essential for the detection of pathological lesions during colonoscopy. However, it has been found to be inadequate in approximately 20% to 30% of colonoscopy examinations. Educational interventions focused on health staff, such as physicians and nurses, may improve the patients’ understanding of the bowel preparation instructions, and consequently, increase the quality of bowel preparation. OBJECTIVES: To investigate whether enhanced education of ward nurses could improve the bowel preparation quality in inpatients undergoing colonoscopy. DESIGN: This was a single-center randomized controlled study. METHODS: A total of 190 consecutive inpatients scheduled to undergo colonoscopy from March 2019 to March 2020 were randomized to the educated (nurses with enhanced education) or control group (nurses without enhanced education). We assessed the bowel preparation quality using the Boston bowel preparation scale. RESULTS: There were 89 patients in the educated group and 101 patients in the control group. The proportion of colonoscopies with adequate bowel preparation was 83.1% in the educated group and 69.3% in the control group. Patients’ compliance with bowel preparation in the educated group was superior to that in the control group. Furthermore, significantly better sleep quality was found in the educated group. The multivariate logistic regression analysis identified the ward nurses-focused enhanced educational intervention as a risk factor for bowel preparation quality. CONCLUSIONS: The ward nurses-focused educational intervention improved the bowel preparation quality and reduced the adverse event rates in inpatients undergoing colonoscopy. TRIAL REGISTRATION: This study was registered in the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry under number ChiCTR2000030366.