Featured articleWhat they say versus what we see: “Hidden” distress and impaired quality of life in heart transplant recipients
Section snippets
Design
A descriptive, exploratory, cross-sectional qualitative design using digital audio- and videotaping of interviews with heart transplant recipients was employed. The study was approved by the research ethics board of the University Health Network. Each patient gave written, informed consent prior to participation. The study took place in a tertiary-care academic health science center heart transplant program.
Participants
Consecutive potential participants attending the post-transplant ambulatory follow-up
Results
The majority of the patients were male (70%), aged 53 ± 13 (mean ± SD) years (age range 18 to 72 years), and at a time since transplant of 4.1 ± 2.4 (mean ± SD) years. This is consistent with the demographic characteristics of a typical transplant program.1 Twenty-five patients completed the interview and none declined to answer any questions or asked to erase interview segments. The average length of interview was 74 minutes, ranging from 29 to 113 minutes. The study population was comparable
Discussion
Distress was much more common in this sample than the self-report questionnaire-based literature suggests. Eighty-eight percent of participants clearly voiced and/or demonstrated distress during a focused, conversational interview. Verbal expressions of distress were frequent, transient and thought to be in keeping or clinically appropriate to the discussion content, especially surrounding issues of the donor, the donor family and the gift of life. However, 52% of patients demonstrated
Disclosure statement
The authors thank Stella Kozuszko.
This project received peer-reviewed funding from the University Health Network MultiOrgan Transplant Academic Enrichment Fund. This funding organization played no role in any aspect of the research study. This grant supported one half-time master's-prepared advance practice nurse to work in the capacity of a research associate, as well as the costs of audiovisual equipment, transcriptionists, software programs and patient travel reimbursements.
The authors have
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