RNSurveyJournal of clinical nursing2026

Discharge Learning Needs and Associated Factors Among Patients Undergoing Cardiac Surgery: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Serdar Sever, Buse Bostan, Halime Çayli

PMID 41949210

WHAT IT FOUND

Cardiac surgery patients rated treatment complications, daily activities, quality of life and medications as the highest discharge learning needs.

Women, less-educated and non-working patients reported more needs; men and uninsured patients reported lower needs.

Key findings

01Treatment and complications had the highest mean PLNS score (35.62 ± 5.04), followed by activities of living (32.92 ± 6.19), enhancing quality of life (31.77 ± 4.71) and medications (31.13 ± 5.09).

02Female patients reported higher total PLNS scores than male patients (p = 0.002), while male gender was independently associated with lower total PLNS scores.

03Patients without health insurance reported lower total PLNS scores (p = 0.023), and lack of health insurance was independently associated with lower total PLNS scores.

STILL TO COME

How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs

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What it does not show

This was a single public hospital in Türkiye with 130 patients, so the results may not apply elsewhere. Participants were recruited by convenience sampling. The cross-sectional design cannot show cause and effect, and it measured needs only at discharge. Answers were self-reported, so patients may have reported what they thought researchers expected. Patients after coronary bypass, valve and vascular surgery were analysed together, so procedure-specific needs may differ.

Declared interests

The authors reported nothing to report for funding and declared no conflicts of interest.

The easy way to misread this

Do not conclude that male and uninsured patients need less discharge education. They reported lower PLNS scores, but the authors suggest this may reflect unexpressed or unmet needs rather than genuinely lower need.

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