Heart Failure Essay

Review of Literature
Albert, N.M. (2013)
Heart failure is progressive and develops over the course of many years. There are two types of heart failure. Chronic heart failure progresses slowly, and acute heart failure is sudden or is a manifestation of new or worsening signs and symptoms. Heart failure can also affect other systems. Renal dysfunction, skeletal muscle dysfunction, dyspnea, cognitive impairment, and circulatory changes can occur. Heart failure can consist of systolic or diastolic dysfunction. The key difference is the ejection fraction. The ejection fraction is how much blood is pumped out and how much remains in the ventricle during systole. In diastolic heart failure, the ejection fraction is normal, and in systolic it decreases. …show more content…
The common goal is to teach patients with heart failure self-care. Through research conducted they found that nurses were not adequately prepared as heart failure educators and that patients did not believe they were able to control heart failure. Evidence-based practice is important and needed to support nurses’ knowledge, comfort, and frequency in patient education before discharge. This will increase the patients’ beliefs about controlling heart failure and increase motivation for patients’ to learn self-care behavior. Increasing the nurse’s security about educating patients will ultimately increase the patient’s security to manage congestive heart failure on their own. “In a sample of 118 nurses, more than 55% of participants spent less than 15 minutes educating hospitalized patients” (Albert, 2013, p. 293). This would seem like a shocking discovery, but sadly it is true. Patients are sent home with a few words and a pack of papers to learn how to manage their disease. This simply is not enough. Given the epidemic of rising health care costs and increased hospitalization, it is imperative to provide adequate education to nurses and their clients about congestive heart failure. It is simply implied that providing adequate education to nurses to pass on to patients will improve outcomes and decrease health care costs by dropping the percentage of frequent hospitalizations for congestive heart

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