Madore, Drew Emerson. Mind, body, and heart: a psychosocial group intervention for left ventricular assist device recipients. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-g02x-6266
DescriptionLeft Ventricular Assist Devices (LVADs) are becoming an increasingly common form of mechanical support for heart failure. While LVADs effectively prolong life for many people, growing recognition of the impact of LVAD implantation on patients’ psychological health, social relationships, and health related quality of life has led to calls for psychosocial interventions geared toward LVAD recipients. This dissertation aims to address this gap in service provision by proposing an intervention designed to improve LVAD self-efficacy, along with addressing the emotional and existential needs of LVAD recipients through a group intervention. The proposed intervention is a hybrid model, comprised of educative topics that can be applied to participants’ personal experiences in a modified supportive-expressive group therapy format. The three organizing themes of the educative modules for the group are organized according to problem-based, emotion-based, and meaning-based coping. Building upon the offered intervention model, this proposal then uses the RE-AIM framework to plan for the implementation of the recommended intervention, and to provide a guide for assessment of the success of the intervention. The incorporation of a dissemination and implementation model – the RE-AIM framework – was done to address the “translation gap” between proposed interventions and their successful implementation in “real world” settings. The benefits of pairing psychoeducation with supportive-expressive interventions, a developmental rationale for the sequencing of modules, and implications for therapeutic integration are discussed.