Health Related Learning Needs among Patients Undergoing Bariatric Surgery

Background: Obesity is a serious and potentially life-threatening condition that impacts manypeople annually. The primary treatment modalities for obesity include bariatric surgery.Assessment of learning needs can help in responding to such needs and affect patients' lifestyles.The educative role of the nurse is an integral part of the care that is essential to patientsatisfaction and positive outcomes. Aim: This study aimed to identify health-related learningneeds among patients undergoing bariatric surgery. Design: A descriptive research design wasutilized for this study. Setting: This study was conducted at the gastrointestinal ward of the MainUniversity Hospital in Alexandria, Egypt. Subjects: a convenience sample of (60) adult patientsundergoing bariatric surgery. Tools: Three tools were utilized for data collection, including alearning needs assessment of patients undergoing bariatric surgery and a structured interviewschedule. Tool I: Bariatric surgery patients’ Socio demographic and Clinical data StructuredInterview Schedule: included two main parts: Part I, Patients' Socio-Demographics. Part II:Patients' clinical data. Tool II: Bariatric surgery patients ' health-related learning needsstructured interview schedule: consisted of two main parts: Part I, the patient's health-relatedlearning needs before bariatric surgery. Part II: Patients' Health-Related Learning Needs AfterBariatric Surgery Results. Tool    : Bariatric surgery patients' psychosocial needs structuredinterview schedule: included two main parts: Part 1: Psychological needs. Part  : Social needs.The results: revealed that all studied bariatric patients had high learning needs in allinvestigated domains. Regarding the total score of preoperative preparation, immediatepostoperative period, discharge, and overall health-related learning needs, it was found that themajority of the studied patients did not identify health (<60%), (78.3%), (95%), (91.7%), (91.7%),respectively. This result revealed that the total score of learning needs of the patients regardingpreoperative preparation, immediate postoperative period and discharge was (6.20±3.21),(20.18±8.58), (25.30±3.97), respectively. Moreover, the overall score for patients' health-relatedlearning needs was (56.33±14.56) and correlation between health-related learning needs andpsychological needs, social needs, and total score of psychological needs was (p < 0.001).Conclusion: It can be concluded that the studied patients had a poor level of knhealth relatedlearning needs regarding the nature of the disease, preoperative care, postoperative care,postoperative complications, lifestyle modifications, and follow-up.