Page 48 - Exploring the Potential of Self-Monitoring Kidney Function After Transplantation - Céline van Lint

46 Chapter 3
ABSTRACT
Self-management support systems (SMSS) have been proposed for renal transplant patients to increase their autonomy and reduce the number of hospital visits. For the design and implementation of such systems, it is important to understand factors influencing patients’ acceptance of a SMSS. This paper aims to identify these key factors.
From literature, possible factors and related questionnaire items were identified. Afterwards, focus groups with experts and patients were conducted to adapt the items to the application domain. To investigate acceptance of a SMSS and the influencing factors, fifty renal transplant patients answered the questionnaire before and after using the SMSS for four months.
All the questionnaire constructs had a satisfactory or higher level of reliability. After using the SMSS for four months, trust and performance expectancy could explain part of the variation in behavioural intention of using the SMSS, but not beyond the explanation given by patients’ affect towards the system, which accounted for 26% of the variance.
We anticipate that in future caregivers implementing a SMSS will benefit from taking steps to improve patients’ affect as this was found to correlate with patients use intention.