Telephone follow-up is one of the important ways to follow up patients. High-quality follow-up can benefit both doctors and patients. However, clinical research-related follow-up is often faced with problems such as time-consuming, laborious and poor patient compliance. The authors belong to a team that has been committed to the study of patient-reported outcomes for a long time. The team has carried out long-term follow-up of symptoms, daily function and postoperative complications of more than 1 000 patients after lung cancer surgery, and accumulated certain experience. In this paper, the experience of telephone follow-up was summarized and discussed with relevant literatures from the aspects of clarifying the purpose of clinical research follow-up, understanding the needs of patients in follow-up, and using follow-up skills.
ObjectiveTo explore the application effect of telephone and WeChat follow-up in patients discharged from hospital with a lagging closed chest drain after stage Ⅲ tuberculous pyothorax surgery. MethodsThe patients discharged with tubes after stage Ⅲ tuberculous pyothorax surgery in the Department of Thoracic Surgery of Chengdu Public Health Clinical Medical Centre from November 2021 to November 2022 were selected for follow-up, and were divided into an observation group and a control group through random grouping to compare and analyse the patients' quality of life, adherence and recovery. Results A total of 81 patients' data were collected in this study, 49 patients in the observation group, with a mean age of 38.63±15.86 years, 63.27% (31/49) males and 36.73% (18/49) females, and 32 patients in the control group, with a mean age of 36.91±17.33 years, 84.38% (27/32) males and 15.63% (5/32) females.The postoperative quality of life scores of patients in the observation group were better than those of the control group in terms of physical function, emotional function, physical symptoms, general health, and quality of life (P<0.05), treatment adherence: daily activity time, use of respiratory trainer, and frequency of coughing were better than those of the control group (all P<0.001), the time of tube banding was less than those of the control group (P<0.001), and the recovery of albumin and haemoglobin was better than those of the control group (P<0.001). control group (P<0.001). ConclusionTelephone combined with WeChat follow-up can improve the quality of life ,compliance of follow-up care, who discharged with tubes ,effectively reduce the time of patients with tubes after surgery, promote nutritional recovery, and accelerate postoperative rehabilitation.