A Descriptive, Correlational Study of Perceptions of Adult Kidney Transplant Recipients and Those Waiting for a Kidney Transplant About Managing Their Medications During a Pandemic.

Introduction: Little is known about COVID-19 impact on patient medication management. Research Question: The aim was to describe medication management, healthcare team interactions, and adherence during the COVID-19 pandemic in kidney transplant patients and those on the kidney transplant wait list. Design: Using a descriptive, correlational design 340 adults from a midwestern US transplant program were recruited. The Managing Medications in the Midst of a Pandemic Survey measured healthcare team encounters and medication management. The Basel assessment of adherence to medications scale measured medication adherence. Results: The response rate was 35% (119/340). During the pandemic, 88% had practiced/were currently practicing socially distancing, 85% had worn/were currently wearing a face mask in public, 18% had been/were currently diagnosed with COVID-19 and 82% received the vaccine. Medication management: 76% planned and organized their own medications. Healthcare team interactions: 89% met in the office, 20% via phone, 12% telehealth, and 13% delayed seeing a healthcare provider because of COVID-19 concerns. Pharmacy interactions: 11% changed their method of obtaining medications from pharmacy due to social distancing. Medication adherence implementation was problematic with 19% missing a dose; results from the binary logistic regression suggested that those with higher levels of education were more likely to report missing a dose. Conclusions: Patients acted to prevent COVID-19 but some still contracted the virus. The pandemic changed healthcare team medication management interactions. Adherence implementation problems were nearly 20%. Findings are relevant to the transplant healthcare team to understand the impact of a pandemic on patient/team interactions and medication adherence.

Heart transplant patient teaching documentation.

Appropriate documentation of pre- and post-heart transplantation patient teaching has become increasingly challenging for the clinical nurse specialist (CNS) due to an increase in volume of referrals for heart transplantation evaluation, co-morbidities of those seeking transplant, complexity of the information that must be provided to candidates, demands by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations, and the compressed time for teaching, especially in the post-transplant hospitalization period. No heart transplant patient teaching documentation format was found in the literature that assisted us in overcoming these new demands. Using a center-developed Pre- and Post-Heart Transplant Patient Teaching Record, we describe a hypothetical case study to illustrate successful documentation by the CNS and the transplant team of the patient teaching plan of care.