Abstract:

Determination of Patient Learning Needs of Surgical Patients Background: Increasing shortening of the hospital stay in health services today has made planning of discharge more important. Patients who have surgery can go back to the hospital if the problems they encounter during discharge are not solved. Objectives: To determine the learning needs of surgery patients. Methods: A descriptive study was conducted with 151 patients, who undergo surgery in a University Hospital between April to June 2016. The permission was obtained from the ethics committee, hospital institutions and patients. Data were collected within 24-48 hours before the patients were discharged using by Socio-Demographic and Medical Status Form and the Patient Learning Needs Scale. Data were analyzed by number, percentage, mean, standard deviation and student's t, Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis test. Results: The average age of patients was 46.8 ± 13.0, 57.6% of the patients were female, 68.9% of the patients were married, 28.5% are high school graduates. The average stay of the hospital was 11.2 ± 10.3 days. Laparoscopic cholecystectomy surgery was performed in 12.8% of patients. 86.3% of the patients stated that they had nursing discharge education. Mean of learning needs of the patients were found to be very important with 205.0 ± 26.7. The most important learning need of patients was the medications (33.9 ± 4.8, importance level: 4.24) and the least important learning need was the emotions related to the situations (19.4 ± 3.7, importance level: 3.86). The most important need of the patients for discharge was the question "How to manage the symptoms I have?" (The level of importance is 4.39) Conclusion: Despite the active role of nurses in the discharge training of patients who underwent surgery, they showed that the learning needs were very high. It is suggested to perform planned discharge training, especially for medications. according to their learning needs

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