The purpose of this study was to describe the lived experience of patients with heart transplantation in Korea.

Individual indepth interviews and a focus group interview were used to collect the data from nine patients who had heart transplantations in 2015. All interviews were audio-taped and verbatim transcripts were made for the analysis. Data were analyzed using Colaizzi's phenomenological method.

Among the nine participants, eight were men. Mean age was 57.30 years. Six theme clusters emerged from the analysis. ‘Joy of rebirth obtained by good luck’ describes the pleasure and expectation of new life after narrow survival. ‘Suffering from adverse drug effects’ illustrates various psychosocial difficulties, such as low self-esteem, helplessness, alienation, and burnout, arising from the side effects of medications. ‘Body and mind of being bewildered’ illustrates disintegrated health and haunting fear of death. ‘Alienation disconnected with society’ describes isolated feeling of existence due to misunderstandings from society. ‘Suffering overcome with gratitude and responsibility’ includes overcoming experience through various social supports and suitable jobs. Finally, ‘acceptance of suffering accompanied with new heart’ illustrate changed perspective of life itself.

The findings in this study provide deep understanding and insights of the lived experience of heart related illness for these patients and should help in the development of tailored-interventions for patients with heart transplantation.

The main purpose of this study was to develop a substantive theory on the life of patients with heart transplantation in the context of Korean society and culture. The question for the study was “What is the life of patients like with a heart transplant?”.

A grounded theory method guided the data collection and analysis. Participants for this study were 12 adults who regularly visited a Cardiovascular ambulatorium in a medical center. The data was collected through an in-depth interview and analyses were performed simultaneously.

‘Developing a new life to live on borrowed time’ was the core category in this study. It revealed two types of life, one is living in peace and another is thinking positive.

This study provides a framework for the development of individualized nursing interventions to care for patients with Heart Transplantation. The findings may provide pointers for health professionals about ways to improve support for heart transplant recipients.