Educational Needs of Patients with Heart Valve Replacement Surgery in Birjand, 2012

 Introduction: Despite advances in cardiac surgery, many patients might still encounter some post-surgical complications and difficulties. To overcome such difficulties, they should receive the required education. In view of the fact that determining the educational needs is the first step in educational planning, the present study aims to determine the educational needs of patients undergoing heart valve replacement.  Methods: This descriptive-analytic study was conducted cross-sectionally during the summer of 2012. The questionnaire was designed by the researchers and covered demographics and knowledge assessment sections (in four categories including the nature of diseases, different types of artificial heart valves, drugs and nutritional diets, and the activity level). The validity of the questionnaire was checked based on content validity and its reliability was calculated 0.89 by Chronbach's alpha. Participants were between 15-80 years of age. Their surgery was performed in the last 3 years. The data was analyzed in SPSS (version 16.0) using descriptive statistical tests (mean and standard deviation), t-test, and ANOVA. The significance level was set at P<0.05.  Results: The finding showed that the highest mean score belonged to the knowledge of the nature of the disease whereas the lowest one, to the knowledge of drugs. As regards to the nature of the disease, there was a significant relationship between educational needs of the patients and their gender (P=0.01), age (P=0.02), education (P=0.005), and marital status (P=0.01). As for the knowledge of drugs, there was a significant relationship between gender and education. On the contrary, there was no significant relationship between the patients’ educational needs and previously-received trainings.   Conclusions: Based on the results of the current study and the changing needs of the patients, nurses should perform needs analysis before starting any educational program. Moreover, by designing a well-organized program and investigating the patients before they leave the hospital, nurses should ensure that such a basic need is met. The findings of this study can help nurses to identify the educational priorities of patients undergoing heart valve replacement.