Evaluation of social support among surgical cardiac patients: support for nursing care planning

This descriptive and cross-sectional study aimed to measure social support among subjects hospitalized for surgical treatment of cardiac diseases and to verify the relations between social support and socio-demographic variables. Data were collected between May, 2004 and June, 2005. A total of 86 patients were studied, 47 men, 58 married and the average age was 53 years old. Regarding social support, in an interval from 1 to 5, we found an average of 4.2+0.74 (interval of 1.92 to 5) for the emotional support and 4.2+0.6 (interval of 2.3 to 5) for the instrumental support, which indicate high satisfaction and availability of received supports. We found weak but statistically significant correlations between instrumental and emotional supports and the participants' age and between instrumental support and years of education. We did not find any differences in the perception of social support in terms of participants' gender and marital status.