Change in the type of work of postoperative liver transplant patients

Background: Returning to work has been recognized as an indicator of functional recovery. Few studies have aimed to explore whether one's type of work changes after transplantation. Purpose: This study aims to describe the change in types of work in liver transplant patients. Methods: A retrospective and descriptive study was conducted at a medical center in northern Taiwan. The data were collected by a self-report questionnaire between July and September 2010. Descriptive statistics an correlational analysis were used to analyze the data. Results: A convenience sample of 111 adult liver transplant patients was included in this study. Of the sample, 20 patients remained unemployed, 44 had a change in status by becoming unemployed (n = 42) or employed (n = 2), and 47 patients remained employed after transplantation. At the time of data collection, 49 (44.1%) liver transplant patients were gainfully employed, a rate that was lower than that of the pretransplantation stage (n = 89, 80.2%). The number of workers engaged in manual labor decreased from 40 to 18 between pre- and posttransplantation. Of the 47 still-employed patients, 6 (12.8%) changed their occupation after transplantation. Conclusion: The rate of gainful employment after liver transplantation was low, and those patients who had done manual labor pretransplantation were no longer able to do this type of work and were unemployed. The still-employed patients who worked in management or were professionals did not change their type of work after transplantation; however, service and labor workers did change their type of work.