Themes of Stressors, Emotional Fatigue, and Communication Challenges Found in Mobile Care Discussion Sessions With Patients Requiring Lifelong Home Parenteral Nutrition Infusions.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this article is to examine themes and topics that emerged from 35 discussion sessions with teens and young adults requiring long-term home parenteral nutrition (HPN) intravenous infusions. The goal was to gain a more detailed understanding of participants' challenges and successes of living with HPN. METHODS: These patients were invited to attend 3 discussion group sessions facilitated by health professionals. A secure iPad Mini was selected as the mobile tablet device for hosting these encrypted audio-visual group discussions. Content analysis, a standard research data-sorting technique, was used to summarize the anonymous data. Words, phrases, and topics in patients' discussions were coded and grouped together with similar concepts and subsequently categorized into themes. RESULTS: Themes in these discussions were related to patients' daily, complex management of HPN. These "themes" included having multiple repetitive illness-related stressors and how those stressors were managed; managing emotions; communication challenges with professionals, family, friends, and using social media; and lastly, the least frequent but no less important theme discussed was how HPN effects their daily lives. CONCLUSION: Teens and young adults living with lifelong HPN face a variety of unique psychological, physical, and emotional stressors and may benefit from numerous methods for managing these challenges.