Current and expected status of comfort from the point of view of hospitalized cardiac surgery patients

The aim of this study was to evaluate the current and expected status of comfort from the point of view of hospitalized cardiac surgery patients. Providing comfort for the patient is one of the most important aspects of nursing that should be considered in all aspects of care as the top nursing care priority. This was a descriptive comparative cross-sectional study in which 292 patients undergoing cardiac surgery were recruited as study sample. Data collection tool was a demographic form and modified form of Kolcaba's comfort questionnaire evaluating the current and expected status of comfort. After that the reliability and validity of the questionnaire was confirmed, it was completed by interview, the second day after surgery. Data analysis was performed by SPSS, version 16. The participants reported the best current status of comfort in psychospiritual (63.57 percent) and sociocultural (62.71 percent) domains of comfort, and rated physical domain of comfort as the lowest one(36.64 percent). Patients reported the comfort status in the environmental domain as moderate (54.78 percent). The most expectation of the patients were to be provided with comfort in psychospiritual (92.02 percent), environmental (91.14 percent) and physical (90.96 percent) domains, respectively, and the provision of comfort in sociocultural domain were least expected (88.16 percent). There was a statistically significant relationship of comfort with gender, age, education, occupation, place of residence, income, number of family members, physical activity and history of heart surgery, hypertension and hyperlipidemia. Patients reported less comfort in the physical domain and the most expected domain of comfort was psycho-spiritual. It is recommended that nurses pay more attention to providing comfort in physical and psychospiritual domains.