LAUSR

Type of funding sources: None. Cardiovascular disease is the major trait to public health and the leading cause of death worldwide.  There are over 1 million new and recurrent myocardial infarctions (MI) occur each year and 12,000 of these individuals are still living. Patients surviving from MI have to adapt to live with the heart disease and restore their quality of life. Hence health education for patients to combat the disease as secondary prevention has become very important. Health care professionals must understand the information needs of patients so that effective health education could be taken place consistently with patients’ needs, to optimize outcome of risk factor modification and lifestyle changes. This study aims to identify post MI patients" perceived learning needs and the demographic factors that influence the needs. Cross-sectional design and convenience sampling method were used for this study. A questionnaire adapted from Cardiac Patient Learning Needs Inventory (CPLNI) was completed by 56 patients who were recruited from a tertiary hospital during inpatient hospitalization in Malaysia. Data from the questionnaires were analyzed using SPSS version 24. It was shown that patients’ perceived learning needs were highly important in all eight domains. All domains range from mean 3.52-3.66. Information in the domains of other pertinent information (sign and symptom of MI), medication as well as anatomy and physiology were highly needed by post MI patients, with mean 3.66, 3.65 and 3.64 respectively. Age was significantly related to the patients’ learning need in the domain of anatomy and physiology. MI patients need abundant cardiac related information prior discharge, to regain and improve their life. This need should be met by delivering appropriate health education before discharge or during follow-up by health care professionals. There is a necessity to integrate this study finding into the cardiac rehabilitation content to benefit post MI patients.