Needs of family members of adult major surgery patients
Creators: name: Perry, Margaret Eileen
Publisher: name: University of British Columbia
Year: 2009

description: This descriptive survey study was designed to describe the needs of family members of major surgery patients during the patient's post-operative hospitalization on a general surgical unit. The study investigated the importance of needs to family members and the extent to which family members felt their needs were met. Factors that might influence the importance of needs such as age of the patient, age and gender of the family member, and relationship of the family member to the patient were also investigated. The study was conceptualized within the framework of the University of British Columbia Model for Nursing (Campbell, 1987) and the nine basic human needs of the model were used as a framework to categorize the family members' needs. A convenience sample of 80 adult family members of 68 adult major surgery patients hospitalized post-operatively on non-intensive care units completed the Major Surgery Family Needs Inventory (MSFNI) and a demographic and health information form. The subjects were approached by the researcher and voluntarily completed the questionnaire after the patient had been hospitalized for at least three days following surgery. While family members, overall, perceived moderately high to high levels of need importance there was a high degree of variability in overall importance and in the importance of individual items. The family members' most important needs related to: having a feeling of hope; having honest, understandable explanations and timely information about the patient's illness, surgery, treatment and progress; and having information about how to help the patient physically and emotionally in the hospital and after discharge. Only after family members had given priority importance to these needs did they identify as important their own physical, physiological and psychosocial needs. In general, family members in this study felt that many of their needs were either partly or fully met. However, some of the needs were not well met, particularly those related to having information about the patient's illness and progress during hospitalization and to having information about how to help the patient physically and emotionally both in the hospital and after discharge. While no significant difference was found between males and females in the overall importance of needs nor in the importance of any of the nine categories of need, a few individual items were rated significantly different. Males also tended to view the satisfaction of their own needs as generally less important than females. No significant difference was found between spouses and non-spouses in the overall importance of need nor in the importance of most need categories. However, spouses and non-spouses did rate a few individual items significantly different. A significant positive relationship was found between family member age and the importance of their needs for collection and removal of wastes and for the intake of oxygen. The higher the age of the family member, the more important were these needs. A significant positive relationship was also found between patient age and the importance of the family members' needs for safety and security, for mastery and for respect of self by self and others. The higher the age of the patient, the higher the importance family members attributed to these basic human needs. The findings of this study were discussed in relation to other research studies, the conceptual framework, and methodological problems inherent in the study. Implications for nursing practice, theory and education and recommendations for future research were identified.