Post-discharge, patient education interventions have been implemented in the cardiovascular surgical population, in which the education is delivered over the telephone. This intervention has shown to be effective in reducing anxiety. However non-significant results have been reported for knowledge acquisition, performance of self-care behaviours, and symptom management during the first 3 weeks of recovery. An internet-telephone educational intervention is presented in this paper as an

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... e to usual cardiovascular surgical, post-discharge patient education. It was reasoned that a combined internet-telephone intervention would decrease nursing workload, provide patients with increased access to information, and reduce the number of hospital readmissions and complications experienced during the post-hospital recovery period. A presentation of the intervention is provided where the components are individualized to reflect the learning needs of the individual patient. This is followed by a discussion of the various considerations for the intervention's design and implementation as they relate to age and socio-economic status is also identified.