Effectiveness of nurse led intervention on kidney transplant recipients in a tertiary care hospital- a randomized controlled trial.

Recipients of kidney transplantation have a better outcome in terms of life expectancy and quality of life but are required to follow strict adherence to therapy and lifestyle modification. It was a prospective randomized controlled, parallel group, interventional, single-centre trial with two arms to assess the effectiveness of nurse led intervention on self care behaviour, psychological symptoms and quality of life among kidney transplant recipients (registry no. CTRI/2018/12/016630, www.ctri.nic.in). It comprised of 120 kidney transplant recipients randomized to receive either standard care (N=60) or standard care plus nurse led intervention (N=60). Outcome measures were assessed at baseline and at 3 months and 6 months post randomization. The mean age of participants was 40.05±10.91 years in experimental and 39.45± 10.09 years in control group. Baseline characteristics in the groups were comparable. Nurse led intervention showed significant difference in the self care behaviour [self care practice (F= 28.30, p<0.001); adherence to therapy (U=1436.0, p=0.03)], psychological symptoms [stress (F= 35.74, p<0.001), anxiety (F= 46.37, p<0.001) depression (F= 65.92, p<0.001)] between the experimental and control group. No significant differences were seen in QOL except in physical domain. Nurses play an important role to improve self care behaviour among kidney transplant recipients.