title: Transplant patients' perceptions about effective preoperative teaching.
abstract: With the increasing number of heart transplants being performed, transplant programs are continually evaluating and revising their programs. The resulting expanded knowledge base is then presented to transplant candidates through preoperative teaching. Often in the design of preoperative teaching programs, nurses use information they believe will be helpful to the patient. Frequently, the patient's needs are not identified and incorporated into the preoperative teaching. The purpose of this descriptive study was to determine what information transplant patients perceived as being helpful in their postoperative recovery. The method for this study involved designing a close-ended questionnaire that elicited responses from participants regarding preoperative teaching needs in the following categories: preoperative, perioperative, immediate postoperative, immunosuppressive drugs, endomyocardial biopsy, rejection, infection, and other. A five-point Likert-type scale was used to rank responses from extremely helpful to not helpful. Questionnaires were mailed to 20 surviving transplant patients who had undergone surgery between October 1982 and August 1985 at a large midwestern hospital that specializes in the treatment of the cardiovascular patient. Seventy percent (14) of the questionnaires were returned to the investigator. Two questionnaires were not used because of incomplete responses. Statistical analysis of the data included frequency distributions and point biserial correlation of the independent variables. Ninety percent of respondents perceived their overall preoperative teaching to be adequate. From these results, it appears that the areas most helpful to participants include information in the following areas: immunosuppressive drugs, rejection, biopsy, and infection. Information perceived as less helpful to participants included explanation of chest tubes and urinary catheters as used in the immediate postoperative period.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D011300:Preoperative Care; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014180:Transplantation / Q000451:nursing / Q000523:psychology*