Social work groups on a heart transplant program.

Descriptive preliminary findings on three psychoeducational groups conducted in collaboration with team members on a heart transplant program at The Presbyterian Hospital in the City of New York at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center are presented. The objectives of such groups are to help patients and families cope more adaptively with pretransplant and posttransplant requirements that involve psychosocial and educational issues. Group participation is voluntary. A major social work role is to support participants' motivations to increase coping skills. Dialogue from actual group sessions reflects group themes, such as coping with the waiting period and reemployment, generated by participants and the social worker for discussion purposes. Patients and families say that groups are valuable to them on a psychologic and practical level.