| Heart failure (HF) is a new epidemic in the United States (US) affecting more than six million Americans with over 500,000 new cases annually. HF is the number one cause for hospitalizations in the Veterans' population 65 years and over (Baldonado et al., 2013). At one Veterans' facility fifty percent of these patients are readmitted within six months of discharge because of non-adherence to a prescribed treatment plan, including follow-up using a telehealth approach. Nurses can play a significant role in preventing these re-hospitalizations by providing standardized care and discharge instructions to patients with HF. However, nurses may not have adequate knowledge and competencies related to HF self-management principles to deliver this standardized, evidence-based (EB) care and discharged instructions. The literature has shown that standardization of care using EB interventions improves patient outcomes. Implementing a clinical HF algorithm for nurses providing telehealth care is an effective method for standardizing that care for Veteran patients with HF. The purpose of this EB project was to improve Veteran patients' outcomes by preventing hospital readmission and dropouts from the TH program using such a standardized algorithm. Keywords: heart failure, self-management, clinical practice guidelines, algorithm and nurses knowledge. |
