The effectiveness of nurse-led interventions on quality of life, medication adherence, anxiety, and depression in kidney transplant recipients: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Purpose: This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of nurse-led interventions on quality of life, medication adherence, anxiety, and depression in kidney transplant recipients.Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. Two researchers independently selected the final literature, and the quality assessment was performed using Cochrane’s Risk of Bias tool. Additionally, a meta-analysis was conducted using the statistical software RevMan 5.4 to estimate effect sizes.Results: Among the reviewed 2,264 papers, 8 final papers, including 6 from the literature search and 2 from manual searches, were included in the analysis. The total number of participants included in the analysis was 477. Nurse-led interventions were found to be effective in improving quality of life (d=1.05) and reducing anxiety (d=-0.98) and depression (d=-1.25). Due to the heterogeneity of the measurement tools, the effect size for medication adherence could not be calculated. Despite this, nurse-led interventions were shown to improve medication adherence. In the cases of anxiety and depression, longer intervention periods showed a more significant reduction trend.Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that nurse-led interventions positively impact quality of life, medication adherence, anxiety, and depression in kidney transplant recipients. Therefore, it is important to recognize the crucial role of nurses and explore ways to provide continuous nursing interventions for kidney transplant recipients.