A well-planned Peri-Operative pre-visit enhances a good rapport between the operating room nurse and the patient. This study examined perioperative pre-visit and cooperation of surgical patients in University of Port-Harcourt teaching hospital, Rivers State. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. The population of the study consisted of 512 patients that had undergone surgery in University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospitals out of which 235 were selected using the simple random sampling method. The instrument for data collection was a semi-structured questionnaire. Data were analyzed using percentage, mean and ANOVA. The result showed that 17.8% of patients indicated that they were visited in their ward by peri-operative nurses, 15.5% were visited before the surgery while 4.9% were visited after the surgery. Only 13.3% indicated that they were given explanation but only 12.4% understood the explanations given. More of the 70.2% of the respondents who were pre-visited knew the expected outcome of the surgery, 88.9% found it easy to cooperate or follow instruction from the surgical team, 84.4% had confident on the surgeons. The result showed that, there was a significant relationship between perioperative pre-visit and the co-operation of the surgical patient.  [F(1,198) = 5.953, p<0.05]. It was concluded that, pre-operative pre-visit to surgical patients makes them to know and understand what to do after surgery, it helps in easy cooperation of patients with the surgical team. It was recommended among others that peri-operative nurses should ensure they visit their surgical patients in the ward for counselling before taking them to the theatre. Also, the surgical team should also ensure they secure the cooperation of the patients before taking them to the theatre.

Keywords:   Cooperation, Patients, Perioperative, Pre-visit, Surgery.