Balancing everyday life-Patients' experiences before, during and four months after kidney transplantation.
Charlotte Nielsen, Jane Clemensen, Claus Bistrup and 1 others
PMID 30918695WHAT IT FOUND
Patients before kidney transplantation focused on everyday life and hope, not future transplant details.
In hospital, interest in education rose as energy returned, and after discharge they balanced home recovery with graft monitoring.
Key findings
01Before transplantation, patients focused on everyday life and hope, while possible disadvantages and complications were not addressed.
02During admission, patients moved from needing explicit expectations to becoming more involved in treatment and care, with growing interest in education.
03After discharge, patients balanced recovery at home with monitoring of graft function, and new routines for medication, nutrition and fluid intake gradually became part of everyday life.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study included 18 patients from one centre, so the themes may not represent all kidney transplant patients. Participants were recruited at different stages rather than followed through the whole process. Follow-up was only four months, before some patients become familiar with everyday life after transplantation. The analysis did not use patient evaluation to validate the interpretation. Several invited patients declined because they lacked mental or physical resources, so experiences of very unwell patients may be underrepresented.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these themes as evidence that a particular education or discharge programme improves graft survival or everyday life. The study asked patients about their experiences and did not test an intervention.