Hi guys,

Sorry about the late response. I’ve been trying so hard to get an accessible account to find articles since my UofT account was closed. I did some readings for social networking and social support for transplant patient and a lot of them has to do with social works rather than nursing, although there are a few good nursing articles out there as well. Anyways, I feel like we can take a look at what worked in other disciplines and kind of incorporate it into our nursing research. There is this particular article published in Social Works in Health Care in 2007 that talks about different factors needed in terms of social support that contributes to a better quality of life in transplant patient. A lot of it we can incorporated into a remote (or E-) social support for our patient population. 

Here’s a little summary of it:

4 components to social support network:

1)      

 Domain support (ex. Family, friends, associates at work, organization)

-        Paper suggest that family is import, but for it to work it needs to augment people from outside of the patient’s domain of life

-        Family provides emotional support, but people from outside the patient’s domain of life can give more informational support

-        (E-social support group can help enrich that domain of support that extends beyond the patient’s domain of life) 

2)      Size of support structure (ex. How many people)

-        Not as critical as other factors)

-        (Keeping the groups small may work to our advantage because its more manageable and provides a good starting point for expansion)

3)      Relationship (Ex. What makes it work?)

-        Can be classified into 3:

1.      Concrete: physical material, resources, and financial support   

2.      Emotional: mental and psychological support

3.      Informational: knowledge support

-        (E-social support group can help with number 3 for sure because it brings together people with common life experiences. It also can help them allocate resource for them which in a way can provide concrete support as well) 

4)      Access and maintenance (Ex. How to keep the group running?)

-        There are 5 components:

1.      Criticalness (critiquing the patient’s performance)

o   The paper suggest that there should be at least one professional to help critique their performance (that can be done by an RN)  

2.      Direction (the patient’s own sense of being supported)

3.      Closeness (social distance)

4.      Frequency

5.      Duration

-        (E-social support group can accommodate all 5 of those factors, especially the last 3, because remote access a lot them to be more socially connected and they can meet when they want and for however long they want)

This pretty much summarized what we came up with in our last meeting, but now we have literature support to back it up with. 

-Chao 

PS. The paper is Contributing of Post-Transplant Social Support to the Quality of Life of Transplant Recipients (2007). By Cetingok et al.  Social Work in Health Care. Vol. 45(3) ß sorry its not in APA