The aims of this study were to identify the mothers educational needs when they have children who have had open heart surgery in congenital heart disease, to identify the children's characteristics with this problem, and also to provide the basic information on the development of the educational program for the mothers. The subjects of the study were 101 mothers of children and their children hospitalized with congenital heart disease in pediatric wards of G. University Hospital in Inchon and S. Hospital in Puchon from June to November 2000. The study used a Likert-type questionnaire with 39 questions which was based on a previous questionnaire developed by Lee Mi-ryun(1989) for adult open heart surgery patients. The reliability of the questionnaire was Cronbach' alpha= .9375. The data were collected directly from mothers of the patients in wards, The t-test, ANOVA was adopted for the data analysis. The key results of the study are as follows: 1) The average age of the children was 32.90 months. The majority of the children are male and weighted 3.0-3.5kg at birth. Most of the children had VSD(29.7%). and 10.9% of children had a family history of heart disease. 2) An average score of 4.62 out of a maximum of 5,00 was recorded for the educational needs of the children's mother. The highest score of 4,69 was for home care after discharge followed by a score of 4.67 for diagnosis and prognosis on congenital heart disease. And pre-post operation care scored 4.51. The mean scores of single-question items of educational need were. in order. 4.81 for immunization after operation, 4.80 for recovery process, and 4.77 for prognosis of the disease. The score of 4.18 for measurement of intake and output was the lowest. 3) The analysis on the children's mothers educational needs by social-demographic characteristics such as sex. age of patient and mother. economical status. educational status. number of child. hospitalization times. and hospitalization cause showed no significant difference statistically. but there was a significant difference between mothers with jobs and without jobs.
Adult ; Child* ; Diagnosis ; Educational Status ; Gyeonggi-do ; Heart Defects, Congenital* ; Heart Diseases ; Heart* ; Home Care Services ; Hospitalization ; Humans ; Immunization ; Incheon ; Male ; Mothers* ; Parturition ; Prognosis ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Statistics as Topic ; Thoracic Surgery*