Effect of Telephone Follow-up Care on Rehospitalization and Depression in Patients Undergoing Open Heart Surgery in a Selected Military Hospital

Open heart surgery is one of the most common surgeries in the world for cardiovascular patients. Physical and psychological dysfunctions are the most common complications of this surgery that lead to rehospitalization and increasing depression in the patients.
The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of the telephone follow-up care on rehospitalization and depression in the patients undergoing an open heart surgery in the 502 Military Hospital.
This quasi-experimental study was conducted on all adult patients underwent an open heart surgery in the 502 Military Hospital during 2015-2016. The patients were recruited by the convenience sampling method and randomly allocated into the two groups of intervention and control. The Beck depression questionnaire was used to collect the data. The telephone follow-up care was performed in patients in the intervention group. Data were analyzed by the SPSS 19 software.
Resuls: The results of the Fisher’s exact test showed that the telephone follow-up care was effective in reducing the rate of rehospitalization in the patients (P=0.035). Also, the results of an independent sample t-test showed a statistically significant difference in the mean score of depression between the intervention (33±9.68) and control (39.27±11.43) groups after the intervention (P= 0.026).
Discussion and Telephone follow-up care reduces a short-term depression after the heart surgery and decreases the rehospitalization of patients undergoing a heart surgery. So, it is suggested that the telephone follow-up care be used in these patients.