Your Role, Your Family’s Role, Your Team’s Role

Part of The Joint Replacement Guide — Phase 2: Considering Surgery · Article 9 of 42 · Hip & Knee

Key Points

• A good outcome from joint replacement is a partnership between you, your support network, and your clinical team.
• Your own engagement with preparation and rehabilitation is one of the biggest controllable factors in your outcome.
• Family or friends play a real, practical role in the first few weeks of recovery, and it helps enormously to plan this in advance.
• The clinical team involved is much larger than just your surgeon.

Your Role

Joint replacement surgery is often described, not entirely accurately, as something that is “done to” a patient. In reality, how actively you engage with the process — before and after surgery — has a real bearing on your outcome. That includes being honest with your team about your health, lifestyle and any concerns; engaging with pre-habilitation and pre-operative optimisation (covered in the next two articles); and, after surgery, committing to the rehabilitation programme even when it’s uncomfortable or inconvenient. Setting realistic, specific goals for yourself — being able to walk a certain distance, get back to a particular activity — also tends to help motivation during recovery.

Your Family or Support Network’s Role

Most people need practical support for at least the first few weeks after surgery — help with shopping, cooking, transport (you won’t be able to drive immediately), and sometimes with personal care in the very early days. It is far better to arrange this support before surgery than to try to organise it afterwards. Simple preparations at home — clearing trip hazards, arranging a chair with good support and arms, having essentials within easy reach — also make a real difference and are worth doing in advance. Family and friends also provide emotional support through what can be, even with a straightforward recovery, a physically and sometimes psychologically demanding few weeks.

Your Clinical Team

Your surgeon is only one part of a much larger multidisciplinary team involved in your care. This typically includes the anaesthetist, who manages your safety and pain relief during and immediately after surgery; pre-assessment nurses, who screen for and help optimise any health issues before your operation; physiotherapists and occupational therapists, who guide your mobility and rehabilitation both in hospital and afterwards; ward nursing staff; and your GP, who remains involved throughout, particularly around your existing health conditions and medications. Understanding that this is a team effort — rather than a single procedure performed by one person — helps set realistic expectations about who you’ll interact with and when.

In More Depth

There is a reasonably consistent body of evidence linking patient engagement and self-efficacy — essentially, how confident and involved someone feels in managing their own recovery — with better patient-reported outcomes after joint replacement. This is part of the rationale behind modern Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) programmes, covered later in this guide, which are built around active patient participation from the point of listing for surgery, not just from the day of the operation itself. Discharge planning — working out where you’ll go and who will support you after leaving hospital — is now typically discussed well before surgery for exactly this reason, since arrangements made in advance are consistently associated with smoother, earlier discharges.

This article is general information and does not replace individual clinical advice.

Sources

• NICE guideline NG157 — Joint replacement (primary): hip, knee and shoulder (2020)
• ERAS Society — Enhanced Recovery After Surgery guidelines
• Centre for Perioperative Care (CPOC) — patient and carer resources

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