RESUMEN
The aim of this study was to compare between the traditional nursing care and clinical pathway in planning for postoperative care of patients with CABG surgery. The study was conducted in the intensive care units and postoperative surgical units of open heart surgery departments of the National Heart Institute in Cairo. using a quasi-experimental design. It included 100 nurses, six resident physicians and 200 patients admitted for CABG surgery. The data collection tools included a questionnaire sheet for nurse's knowledge, an observation checklist for nurse's performance, a patient assessment sheet, and the clinical pathway map. A clinical pathway orientation program was designed and implemented. The study revealed very low performance of nurses in the pre-intervention phase. After implementation of the pathway, nurses' knowledge and performance in the intervention group significantly improved, and their patients had significantly higher mean number of instructions. In total, 32.0% of the nurses had correct application of the pathways, and all the clinical pathway team members were satisfied with its application. It is concluded that the implementation of the clinical pathway led to significant improvements in nurses' knowledge and performance, reflected in significant decrease in patients' length of hospital stay. It is recommended to implement the developed clinical pathway in the study settings and similar ones. Post-operative cardiac surgery care nurses need in-service training programs to improve their knowledge and performance