The Development of the Nursing Care System for Patients with Cleft Lip-Palate and Craniofacial Deformities at Tawanchai Cleft Center, Srinagarind Hospital, Khon Kaen, Thailand
Suteera Pradubwong MSN*, Sumalee Pongpagatip MA*, Kanittha Volrathongchai PhD**, Bowornsilp Chowchuen MD, MBA***
Affiliation : * Division of Nursing,Srinagarind Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen, Thailand ** Faculty of Nursing, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen, Thailand *** Department of Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen, Thailand
Background : The highest incidence of cleft lip-palate and craniofacial deformities in Thailand occur in the Northeastern
Region. There is the necessity for an interdisciplinary care team as well as the specialized care center with systematic
coordinated care, thus “Tawanchai Cleft Center” is becoming a superior medical center for patients with cleft lip-palate and
craniofacial deformities. Therefore, the development of the nursing care system for patients with cleft lip-palate and cranio-
facial deformities at Tawanchai Cleft Center, Srinagarind Hospital is extremely important and necessary.
Objective : To develop the nursing care system appropriate for a super tertiary hospital (Tawanchai Cleft Center).
Material and Method: It is a participation study which has 3 steps as follows, 1) Analyzing the situations and collecting the
opinions of the 22 Out-patient Surgery Department staff and Tawanchai Cleft Center staff by using 6 questions, 2) Summa-
rizing of the situation analysis from the meetings and the questionnaires, then using such summary as the guidelines for
developing the nursing care system from January 2011 onwards, 3) evaluating the satisfaction after the 4 month development
period (May-August 2011) with 106 caregivers by using 8 questions and being analyzed by the average value, percentage and
standard deviation.
Results : 1) The nursing care system consisted of psychosocial care, breast feeding, counseling and other assistance as
required. This various assistance responded to the patient/family problems by following the treatment guideline of the
multidisciplinary team which uses the continuous evaluation processes for the holistic patient/family care. 2) The patients with
complete cleft lip-palate were the most common type, found in 44 cases or 41.53 percent. The highest number of caregivers
were mothers which were 68 percent; the average age of those mothers was 36 years old. The highest number of them finished
elementary school at 43 percent and 40 percent were farmers. The satisfaction for the services of Tawanchai Cleft Center
showed the average for each satisfaction subject all at very good level (x = 3.56, SD = 0.1 3).
Conclusion : The care for patients with CLP and craniofacial deformities at Tawanchai Cleft Center, Srinagarind Hospital
has been developed in order to have the appropriate nursing care system to provide superior quality care, which provides
patient-holistic care, as well as improving effective accessibility to the services. Thus, the patients/caregivers who are satisfied
with given services, get continuing monitoring and treatment and are able to live their lives in the society happily.
Keywords : Cleft lip-palate and craniofacial deformities, Nursing care system development, Tawanchai cleft center
