Assessment of Health-related Learning Needs among Patients undergoing Thoracic Surgery

Background: Thoracic surgery is one of surgical specialties that dealing with thediagnosis and treatment of congenital or acquired diseases of the thorax, including disease of thechest wall, pleura, lungs, airways, mediastinum, diaphragm, and esophagus. It was estimated thatApproximately 530,000 general thoracic surgery cases are performed annually in the UnitedStates. Objective: Identify the health-related learning needs among patients undergoing thoracicsurgery. Settings: This study was conducted at the cardiothoracic surgery department,Alexandria Main University Hospital of Egypt. Subjects: A convenience sample of 80 adultpatients, males and females were admitted to the above-mentioned department undergoingthoracic surgery.Tools: Two tools were used by the researcher based on the review of recentrelated literature to collect the necessary data. Tool one: Thoracic surgery patients’ sociodemographiccharacteristics and clinical data structured interview schedule. Tool two: Thoracicsurgery patients’ health-related learning needs scale. Results: All the studied patients had poorknowledge regarding to thoracic surgery health-related learning needs in the pre-, intra-, andpostoperative periods, and the min-max of the total scores were 221.0-289.0 and the mean ± SDwas 242.3 ± 14.29. Also, this result shows the min-max of the percent score was 17.50–30.58 andthe mean ± SD was 21.59 ± 2.75. There was no statistically significant relation between thoracicsurgery health-related learning needs and their age, marital status, level of education, area ofresidence, monthly income from the patient’s point of view P = 0.382, 0.372, 0.381, 0.829, 0.057respectively.Conclusion: All the studied patients needed knowledge in thoracic surgery healthrelatedlearning needs in the pre, intra, postoperative period. Recommendations: Establishinginstructional guidelines on patients undergoing thoracic surgery before and after surgery,Cardiothoracic department should be supplied with a nursing protocol regarding care forpatients undergoing surgical procedures and periodic scientific meetings must be conductedamong multidisciplinary team to discuss patient’s problems and establish a comprehensive planto meet thoracic surgery patient’s learning needs. The proposed perioperative nursing guidelinesfor patients undergoing thoracic surgery should be distributed and implemented in thoracic unitfor nurses in all university hospitals, health insurance units, medical institutions, and privatehospitals.