This research investigated the effect of three different teaching approaches on patient teaching outcomes among patients who had undergone coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. The specific teaching methods utilized in the study included an inhospital teaching program, a post-discharge telephone follow up program and post-discharge group teaching program. The study included a total of 90 participants who were assigned to one of the three teaching modalities. All participants were patients at a large midwestern community hospital and had undergone elective CABG surgery. Data collection for the study included the use of post-test measures to determine patient teaching outcomes. The instruments used in the study included: (a) Cardiac Surgical Patient Self Efficacy (CSPPSE) tool to measure participant perception of their self efficacy, (b) Heart Disease Management Questionnaire (HDMQ) to measure the subject\u27s cognitive knowledge related to heart disease management and (c) Cardiac Surgical Patient Teaching Satisfaction Inventory (CSPTI) to measure the perception of patients\u27 satisfaction with the teaching they had received. Analyses of the data revealed similar patient teaching outcomes regardless of the type of teaching program the participant had received. This finding supported the effectiveness of the inhospital teaching protocol which focused on survival skills for self-care management post-discharge. The more traditional patient education approaches reported in the literature had advocated the inclusion of heart disease physiology and emphasis on risk factor modification. The findings of the study also revealed that those patients who had longer lengths of stay and those patients who had larger numbers of coronary vessels bypassed were the least satisfied which their teaching. The younger participants in the study (ie. less than 70 years of age) overall had higher cognitive knowledge scores than the older cohort group in the study. The implications of this research were described in relation to the validation of a shortened inhospital teaching protocol and possible alternative approaches for older patients and those patients who have longer lengths of stay following cardiac surgery
