Developing new ways to address learning needs of adult abdominal organ transplant recipients.

Context: The degree to which patients are knowledgeable about posttransplant care can affect outcomes and patients' satisfaction. Transplant team members must identify knowledge gaps, contributory factors, and innovative methods to address learning needs.

Objective: To identify patients' perceptions of their knowledge gaps and identify ways to improve current approaches to patient education.

Design: Nonexperimental.

Setting: Midwestern teaching hospital.

Patients: 726 adult abdominal organ transplant recipients.

Intervention(s): A patient education survey was mailed out to solid-organ transplant recipients who met study criteria. A modified version of the Patient Learning Needs Scale (PLNS) was used to identify the recipients' learning needs. Additional questions on the survey addressed factors that we hypothesized would influence responses to the PLNS and asked patients which methods would help them learn during various phases of the transplant process.

Main Outcome Measure(s): Statistical analysis was conducted on survey responses.

Results: Overall, PLNS scores were satisfactory in all 4 categories. Analysis of PLNS subscales revealed significantly lower scores in the quality of life/psychosocial subscale compared with the other 3 subscales. Significantly lower scores in the medications and follow-up categories of the PLNS items were found among the group whose length of stay was between 15 to 30 days compared with patients with shorter and longer stays. A variety of different methods are desired by patients in order to get information, especially before transplant.