Identifying Needs and Barriers to Engage Family Members in Transplant Candidate Care.
Warren T McKinney, Marilyn J Bruin, Sophie Kurschner and 2 others
PMID 33754928WHAT IT FOUND
Family members of kidney transplant candidates feel isolated and unprepared to help.
They struggle with communication barriers, lack of knowledge about options, and patients' reluctance to be a burden. These insights highlight the need to integrate support networks into care planning.
Key findings
01Two primary themes emerged: end-stage kidney disease affects the whole support network, and participants felt unprepared to make decisions about transplant.
02Participants described feeling isolated from other caregivers and lacking their own support network.
03Barriers to supporting patients included difficulty communicating, patients resisting help to avoid being a burden, difficulty understanding information, and feeling helpless.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Participants were recruited from one geographic region and were predominantly white. Participants were more educated and earned greater incomes than the general population. The vast majority of participants were family members, so friends' experiences were not fully captured. Qualitative data does not provide information on the frequency or prevalence of these experiences. The study focused on candidates on the waitlist, not those living with a transplant.
Declared interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume these findings apply broadly to all populations. The sample was predominantly white, highly educated, and high-income, and was drawn from a single geographic region. The experiences of more diverse or lower-resource support networks may differ significantly.