The Perception of Cardiac Surgery Patients on Comfortable Resources: A Qualitative Study

Comfort is a basic human need throughout life and an outcome of nursing. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the comforting needs of cardiac surgery patients, who experience the complications and problems of this surgery. This study was performed to explain the perception of cardiac surgery patients of comfortable resources.

This study was conducted with a qualitative, content analysis approach. The participants were 20 cardiac surgery patients. Data collection was performed through unstructured interview and purposive sampling, and continued until data saturation. Continuous analysis of data was performed concurrently with data collection and through a comparative method.

During the content analysis process, 4 themes emerged that indicated the nature and dimensions of the patients’ perception of comfortable resources. These themes included “Feeling a close and humanistic relationship with the nurse”, “Understanding the constant presence and monitoring of the nurse”, “Advocacy of family and peer patients”, and “Being in a safe environment”.

The results of the current study showed that patients receive more comfort from human resources than environment and modern equipment. This issue shows the importance of highlighting the role of nurses and humanistic nursing care, despite the need for specialized nursing with modern technical facilities. Therefore, considering nurses and the standardization of human resources in health centers is more important than the physical standardization. This will result in nursing interventions being done with real understanding of the patients’ needs.