Ask an answerable question (PICO)：
Postoperative nausea and vomiting is one of the common postoperative complications. Without proper management, it may affect the quality of recovery. Clinically, most of them are treated with antiemetic, however, antiemetic is not effective for every patient, and sometimes it may has side effects on patients’ health. Therefore, I wonder is there any treatment nurses can do? After literature review, I found that many studies mentioned that aromatherapy can relieve postoperative nausea and vomiting. Thus, I would like to discuss whether aromatherapy can relieve postoperative nausea and vomiting by using evidence-based methods.
The Method and Analysis of Literature Review：
1. We set PICO questions to answer whether aromatherapy can relieve postoperative nausea and vomiting.
2. We set key word: P(Postoperative patient), I(Aromatherapy), and O(nausea/ vomiting), and limitation: in English, from 2015 to 2020, adult, RCT or SR. We used Bollean logic to search database in PubMed, CINAHL, Medline (Ovid). Totally 6 studies were recruited. After reading them, 3 studies were included, including 2 RCTs and 1 SR, and we used Oxford center for EBM in 2011 to analysis their level of evidence.
Critical Appraisal：
1. Karaman, et al. (2019):
Patients were divided into placebo group, ginger group, lavender group, and rose group according to the essential oils they used. The study results showed that aromatherapy by using lavender and ginger was significantly related to the relief of nausea, and there was less proportion of people in ginger group and lavender group using antiemetic drugs than people in placebo group and rose group.
2. Adib-Hajbaghery & Hosseini. (2015):
Patients using ginger essential oil aromatherapy, their intensity of nausea was significantly reduced two hours and six hours after surgery, and the frequency of vomiting two hours and six hours after surgery was lower than those using placebo.
3. Asay, et al. (2019):
With appropriate essential oils, aromatherapy can reduce the intensity of postoperative nausea and the use of antiemetic drugs.
Results, Conclusions and Recommendations：
In conclusion, with appropriate essential oils, aromatherapy can reduce the intensity of postoperative nausea and reduce the incidence of postoperative vomiting. Some studies also mentioned that it can reduce the use of antiemetic drugs in postoperative patients.
