Introduction
The majority of patients with chronic heart failures have various difficulties due to their needs to be frequently hospitalized. The families of such people are obliged to take them to the medical institutions when their relatives complain about severe chest pains. Unfortunately, the necessity mentioned above lowers the level of the patients’ lives. To address the given issue, scholars organized research that is intended to determine whether telephone nursing intervention is beneficial in the instances mentioned above or people might be obliged to travel to the hospital regularly. To obtain accurate results, the sampling of fifty people was divided into two separate groups. The participants of the study were to experience the new medical treatment approach and clarify if the quality of their lives increased. The purpose of the following paper is to analyze if the method of telephone intervention is effective in increasing the CHF patients’ lives’ quality.
The Research Question
As it is mentioned above, the primary research question is supposed to identify whether the patients who face the problem of the chronic heart failure diagnosis can benefit from the telephone intervention by nurses. It would be proper to state that a tremendous number of patients with CHF are re-admitted to the hospitals after their treatment processes. This situation has an adverse impact on the Greek health care system’s financial statement (Pfeiffer et al., 2014). Unfortunately, people are obliged to go to the hospitals as they do not know how to cope with their chest pains. To make their lives easier and less complicated, it is essential to provide them with the necessary help in distance. The question was raised due to the patients’ lowered quality of life and certain financial difficulties in the national health care system. Although this problem had to be addressed earlier, the situation became critical as more and more people with CHF require immediate help or their nurses’ pieces of advice.
The Research Design of the Study
The research design implies both qualitative and quantitative methods. The central question of the article was described by scholars who evaluated all the gathered information. The results section provides numbers and statistics that were used in the study. The authors preferred to combine two research methods as each technique has its advantages and disadvantages. For instance, the qualitative design is helpful in covering and discussing the given problem in details, but its accuracy and general presence depends on the author’s professional skills. On the other hand, quantitative research can be developed and structured faster (comparing to other methods), but it requires an enormous amount of financial investments and many people for a study’s sampling. Stavrianopoulos (2016) utilized the two designs discussed above as some of their qualities were necessary for the data recording procedure.
The study lasted for sixteen weeks (one session per week). Each participant was consulted as to his or her health conditions for twenty minutes (Stavrianopoulos, 2016). All the patients were interviewed after the data collection process to analyze and compare their satisfaction with the telephone intervention service.
The Sample of the Study
The discussed study included fifty participants. As mentioned above, they were divided into two separate groups. It would be proper to stress that individuals who took part in the research were not chosen according to their social statuses. However, one of the groups was intended to experience nursing telephone intervention. Another group had to control the entire process. Another essential factor to state is that the sampling included both males and females. Unfortunately, some scholars prefer to choose people of one gender or age to acquire precise results. In reality, it is more beneficial to include diverse individuals, regardless of their race, gender, age, marital status, and other similar factors (Suman-Horduna et al., 2013). Therefore, this research’s sampling is considered to be adequate. The only gap that the participants present is that their health conditions vary as every person has a separate stage of CHF.
The Data Collection Methods
The main data collection tool was a questionnaire that was given to each member of the chosen sampling. The questions included in the poll were intended to determine whether the participants’ lives’ quality improved after completing the entire telephone intervention course or not. Every person required approximately twenty minutes to answer all the questions. The data was collected by the scholars who evaluated it afterward (Stavrianopoulos, 2016). The only gap that occurred in the data collection procedure was caused by people who could not remember the results of every intervention session. Such ethical considerations as the risk of harm and the lack of professional physical assistance made people concerned about their health conditions as they were not confident enough to cope with their diseases at first. However, the situation changed in several weeks.
The Limitations of the Study
As it is mentioned above, the main limitation of the given study is that some patients could not manage to remember all the results. Also, the scholars claim that the sampling was considerably small for this type of research. To avoid similar mistakes in subsequent studies, it would be proper to interview each participant after every session (Stavrianopoulos, 2016). Various limitations are important to list and discuss within each study for their authors to see how to avoid particular difficulties (that might influence the accuracy of results) in the future.
The Description of the Research Findings
Chronic heart failure cases are widespread among the older generation. Despite all the inventions and new technologies in CHF therapy and treatment, some patients’ quality of life remains at a low level. However, the implementation of telephone intervention demonstrated how people (who have type HYHA II or III) benefited from such an approach to their health conditions (Stavrianopoulos, 2016). The quality of their lives significantly increased. As it is possible to see, the findings answered the main question of the given study as its results say that the patients’ lives became better and easier after each session. The findings are credible as they were gathered with the help of honest participants. Moreover, every outcome became evident after the entire course as the patients seemed to be happier and less stressed (unlike before the intervention). The findings support the research question posed within the study because each aspect of the patients’ major complaints and difficulties in their lives was addressed and successfully resolved.
Summary & Conclusion
The method of telephone intervention is an effective approach to CHF patients who experience particular difficulties presented by their low quality of lives. Although there was a plethora of modern equipment in the country’s hospitals, people with heart failures and their families still were not happy with their lifestyles. The sampling of the study included fifty people (divided into two groups). The intervention sessions lasted twenty minutes once a week (sixteen weeks in total). The data was collected with the help of a questionnaire at the end of the course. The findings of this research answered its main question as every patient benefited from the method discussed above. To implement this type of intervention to practice, it has to undergo various verification tests. In other words, it has to be proved by a wider sampling. Telephone intervention seems to be effective in improving the CHF patients’ quality of life but still needs to be tested before using it on a regular basis.
References
Pfeiffer, K., Beische, D., Hautzinger, M., Berry, J. W., Wengert, J., Hoffrichter, R.,… Elliott, T. R. (2014). Telephone-based problem-solving intervention for family caregivers of stroke survivors: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 82(4), 628-643.
Stavrianopoulos, T. (2016). Impact of a nurses-led telephone program on the quality of life in patients with heart failure in a district hospital of Greece. Health Science Journal, 10(4:5), 1-8.
Suman-Horduna, I., Roy, D., Frasure-Smith, N., Talajic, M., Lespérance, F., Blondeau, L.,… Khairy, P. (2013). Quality of life and functional capacity in patients with atrial fibrillation and congestive heart failure. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 61(4), 455-460. Web.