Gaps and disparities in delivery of heart failure education by nurses and performance in the accomplishment of self-care behaviors by patients with advanced heart failure may be factors in clinical decompensation and unplanned health care consumption. Is nurse-led education effectively delivered before hospital discharge? Nurse leaders must understand the strength of nurses’ knowledge base related to self-care principles and important barriers to best practice. Nurses may not be comfortable teaching patients about dry weight, meal planning, heart failure medications, or progressive steps of activity and exercise. Further, clinical nurses may not have time to provide in-depth education to patients before discharge.
Equally important, research is needed to learn about factors that enhance patient adherence to heart failure self-care behaviors, since adherence to national, evidence-based, heart failure guideline recommendations improves clinical outcomes. Thus, nurses and patients are on parallel paths related to setting the foundation for improved self-care adherence in advanced...