Suzanne Fredericks

Dr. Fredericks research program aims to develop and evaluate interventions to support individuals after experiencing invasive procedures. To this end, she has examined educational interventions delivered to patients following invasive surgical procedures, in order to determine their overall effectiveness in enhancing self-care behaviour performance and reducing the rate of complications, onset and/or exacerbation of symptoms, mortality rates and hospital readmissions. She has also designed and led studies to improve our understanding of how and when to deliver educational interventions to patients postoperatively. In these studies, she examined different characteristics of educational interventions including their timing, dosage, medium and mode of delivery. The findings of these studies have led to the realization that not only do the characteristics of an intervention impact its effectiveness, but the characteristics of an individual also play a vital role in influencing the effectiveness of these interventions. Consequently, Dr. Fredericks has designed and implemented studies to examine the influence of various demographic characteristics—such as culture, age, sex, marital status, educational level, and co-morbid conditions (i.e. anxiety and stress)—on outcomes of interest. Awareness of the effect of these characteristics on the effectiveness of educational interventions has led to a call for revising how nurses engage with and mentor their patients. Several discussion papers have been written in response to these studies that focus solely on intervention redesign and reformatting of mentorship models.