Stressors in open-heart surgery patients: A qualitative study

Open-heart surgery is a stressful experience for the patients and their families. From the moment that patients are told they must undergo surgery until discharge, they experience different degrees of worry and nervousness. This study was conducted with the aim of identifying stress factors in heart surgery patients.

This study was performed using a qualitative method on 21 participants (14 patients and 7 caregivers). The research environment was open-heart surgery wards of two educational hospitals in Ahwaz (south of Iran) in 2017. The participants were selected through purposive sampling. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews, and then, analyzed using the qualitative approach of content analysis proposed by Graneheim and Lundmnan (2004).

The 5 themes of "physical stressors", "self-care stressors", "psychological stressors", "religious stressors", and "hospital stressors" were obtained. These themes were the result of the patients' experiences and dimensions of patients' perceptions regarding stressors in open-heart surgery.

Stress in patients undergoing open-heart surgery is a contextual and relative concept and a subjective experience, which is experienced as a sense of worry. Identifying and clarifying stressors in open-heart surgery patients for nurses is vital, like a key for improving care quality. Nursing managers in clinical practice can also benefit from these findings regarding heart surgery in improving the care quality and professional performance of nurses.