Preface
Medical professionals attribute the problem of balance in the human body to heart failure. This condition of the heart is usually chronic or long-term. However, in other cases, it can develop suddenly. The heart is prone to many problems including the left and right side effects of the heart. Doctors refer to these problems as left-sided or right-sided heart failure (Cowley & Houston, 2003). Heart failure occurs when the muscles of the heart are unable to eject or pump blood from the heart effectively, a problem is commonly known as systolic heart failure. Additionally, heart failure is present at a time when the heart muscles become stiff and have trouble when filling up with the blood, a problem known as diastolic heart failure. This paper will seek to write a teaching plan proposal on heart failure and the education that nursing provides to the patients admitted to the hospital.
Basic path-o-physiology review
Evidence-based knowledge
Documented evidence points out that there are issues that affect people who suffer from heart failure. The process of heart failure is disturbing and can lead to further complications, which in turn might worsen the condition (American Heart Association, 2006). As such, the nursing staff has a responsibility to teach heart failure patients more about this condition. One of the identified disease problems is congestive heart failure. According to the State Health Facts, the state of Nevada lost 195 people in 2008 due to diseases related to heart failure. Facts maintain that heart failure starts when the heart ceases to pump blood rich in oxygen to the other parts of the body (American Heart Association, 2003). The process of the disease is simple. Failed blood supply amounts to backs ups. As a result, the fluid ends up mounting in parts like the lungs, gastrointestinal tract, arms, liver, and legs. This issue leads to congestive heart failure.
Further, the heart failure process may sometimes take the composition of size. In this case, coronary artery disease paves way for heart failure disorders. When those small blood vessels responsible for supplying both oxygen and blood to the heart narrow, the heart starts experiencing serious problems when trying to execute its main function. With reference to American Heart Association, 2003, coronary artery disease, the heart failure process begins with the narrowing of the blood vessels. In addition, sources opine that process of this disease may start from high blood pressure (American Heart Association, 2003). Under this spectrum, if a person is suffering from high blood pressure he becomes prone to heart failure especially if the condition remains uncontrolled (Cowley & Houston, 2003). This means that if the patient does not control his or her blood pressure, heart failure becomes inevitable. There are also other processes of heart failure. They include leaking valves, heart attack which involves depression, abnormal heart rhythms, and infections that weaken heart muscles.
Relevant effects on client, family, and community
Generally, within this realm of disease, heart failure represents part of the biggest challenges that the state of Nevada is facing with regard to modern health care. The sheer complexity and magnitude present with the spectrum involved by heart failure form a formidable dispute to all the people affected ranging from the patient to family as well as the community. Ideally, it is paramount to note that the estimated toll with reference to economic cost and human life united with inestimable consequences on quality of human life for families, communities, and individuals transcends all racial, gender, socio-economic, and ethnic groups (American Heart Association, 2006). With that in mind, it is disturbing to find that more than ten thousand people in Nevada suffer from heart problems. More aggravating is the fact that another larger number undergoes hospitalization every year and even worse another losses its life to heart-related diseases.
Heart failure in Nevada causes close to two hundred deaths every year. This shows that many people lose their lives. That is effect number one. A survey carried out by Kaiser Family Foundation in 2008 established that 246 male and 149 female residents of Nevada lost their lives due to heart diseases. These findings reveal the magnitude and reality of the results of heart failure diseases. Since death accounts for a greater proportion of incapability of those suffering from heart failure, it is seeable that loss of life is one thing that affects the patient, family, and the community (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2003). The patient is affected in that, he or she losses his life to heart failure disorders and the family loses a member while the community becomes less of an energetic associate capable of adding value to the society.
Community resources exhausted by the client(s)
From the year, 2000 to the present, the death toll continues to devastate the State of Nevada. On the other end, calculations regarding the amount of money excluding other resources that this state loses to the fight are also disturbing. As of 2004, an estimated $3,085,109,650 included $1,894,874,347 spent on direct hospital costs as well as $1,190,235,303 for costs resulting from loss of productivity due to either death or disability went to diseases caused by the circulatory system in Nevada (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2003). These are not individual funds but communal. The community is indeed losing many funds in heart failure cases (Cowley & Houston, 2003).
Believably, a person suffering from heart failure disorder needs a lot of attention. This indicates that there must be someone on sight to take care of the patient. This takes into account the aspect of time. The family as well as the community has a role to play when it comes to taking care of the patient. Situations related to this can prove to be overwhelming hence; the community loses very valuable time. Arguably, the liable caregivers form a potential part of community development activities (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2003). Nevertheless, when these people occupy themselves with providing help and monitoring the response of the patient, they end up losing too much of their time in resource-draining activities. In this view, both the caregiver and the patient become a liability to the community, as their efforts do not aid in community development.
Barriers to accessing health care
According to the Nevada Interactive Health Database (NIHDS), many people who die out of heart failure disorders have difficulties accessing health care at the relevant time (Peckover, 2003). Research findings elaborate that not all people in Nevada have the potential or ability to afford medical cover. Based on that finding, it is true to say that most patients surrender to this disease mainly because of financial problems. Therefore, it is deducible that funds are the number one barrier to accessing health care in Nevada (American Heart Association, 2006). Furthermore, the State Health Rankings Edition of 2010 found Nevada to have quite a considerable number of people without medical cover. Lack of medical cover lowers the chances of getting or rather accessing health care in case of an emergency or a chronic disease.
Another obstacle to accessing health care in the State of Nevada is the issue of unemployment. As different research findings have established, the United States has been fighting the level of unemployment in the country for quite a long time (American Heart Association, 2003). This means that Nevada is part of the States faced with devastating unemployment conditions. Hence, a lack of jobs to help raise income is another barrier resulting in the increased lack of medical attention. Since most people do not have jobs, they lack money to pay for their medical cover (Peckover, 2003). They also have no money to cater for their medicine as well as for paying hospital bills in case of hospitalization. This becomes a potential barrier to accessing health care.
Teaching Plan
Having come face-to-face with all the patients during the teaching, I established that their learning styles are different but possible to alter them for better understanding. After brief direct contact with the patients, it came out that most of the patients did not understand the common methods of learning used in the hospital. As such, I resolved to introduce and apply other forms of learning styles where I found out that the patients could understand much better if other learning styles were in place (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2003). This proposal is certain that patients undertaking heart failure management programs will be in a better position to learn and understand if the tutor could use multimodal learning styles, auditory, and read and/or write as well as kinesthetic styles of learning.
Medication education
Patient needs assessment
Based on medication education undertaken earlier, it is clear that a heart failure patient needs assessment. In order to do so, diagnosing the patient is one way by which the caregiver or doctor can get to know the status of the patient. In response to investigations carried out on heart failure patients, diagnosis proved to be the most substantial model of helping in giving a description of the disease. Of all the 55 patients interviewed, 64 percent of them preferred diagnosis as the only sure means of testing for heart failure diseases (Cowley & Houston, 2003). The importance of this education is that it provided effective and adequate knowledge to patients and their families as well as the community, which is essential for offering preventive and curative measures to the rest of society.
After a bit of patient assessment, it turned out that they all have variable needs. There are those who prefer treatment at their own places of residence and others find hospitals placed in a better position to give the relevant and adequate medical support (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2003). This data came into being after carrying out a structural needs assessment, which improved the health care center’s health outcomes, as the medical staff was able to understand their patients’ needs more appropriately. By use of conversation analysis, it came out that client–tutor interaction formed a pragmatic section of the client’s institutional expectations. Since patient-tutor interactions played such a paramount role in improving medication education, this proposal found it necessary to add more time in heart failure education programs within the referral hospitals in Nevada (American Heart Association, 2006).
Problem statement and Objectives
Problem statement
For many years, the residents of Nevada lived in fear of the risks brought about by heart failure diseases. Research observations show that what attributes to this shock is the people’s advent lack of knowledge about heart failure problems (American Heart Association, 2006). Objectively, this proposal is seeking to establish an education plan suitable for creating awareness about heart failure diseases. As seen, most factors aiding the risks of acquiring heart failure diseases are preventable if well known to all people. Factors like behavior as well as disease conditions such as obesity, high blood cholesterol, and high blood pressure as well as diabetes should not have room for claiming any life with support from heart failure disorders. Individual behaviors like tobacco use, lack of exercise, and poor dietary habits expose people to heart failure diseases simply because they do not know what to do as regards heart failure diseases and prevention (Peckover, 2003).
Objectives of the teaching plan
The main aim of this teaching plan is to create greater awareness about heart failure disorders. As stated, most heart failure patients fail to adhere to the rules and regulations of medication as handed down by the doctor. Some of these patients attempt to stop medication on grounds of side effects brought about by their medication (American Heart Association, 2006). The provided instructions may sometimes seem tiresome and stringent to some patients hence failing to comprehend them. Not knowing, these small mistakes committed by heart failure patients result in their subsequent death and/or incapability. Clearly, this kind of mentality requires a program capable of brushing off and replacing them with health cautious information. The objective of this proposal is to ingrain health knowledge into the minds of heart failure patients and their families and the community at large (American Heart Association, 2003).
Diet restrictions
Barriers to learning and to health care
Inadequate facilities for handling a heart failure teaching program are indeed a barrier to learning. If a single referral hospital in Nevada has a big number of heart failure patients, it becomes ineffective to cater to all of their tutorial needs. Additionally, when the patients’ families and the community at large as well as the nursing staff join the program, it is also difficult to offer a favorable learning environment for all of the involved persons (Cowley & Houston, 2003). Apart from that, lack of enough teaching personnel is yet another barrier to learning and health care as well. This is because, limited number of professionals leads to under attendance, which in turn results, to provision of questionable services.
Outcomes and conclusion
A particular percentage of people who seemed to believe that diseases related to heart failure are incurable. This predisposed them to further chronic conditions. However, as the teaching sessions and face-to-face conversations ended, all people agreed to seek medical attention and check ups frequently as they understood the need for that (American Heart Association, 2003). This model exposed heart failure patients to tolerance and progression thus achieving some degree of accomplishment in this mission. In conclusion, this proposal has resolved to seek to establish a teaching plan in order to eradicate cases of deaths resulting from heart failure diseases.
References
American Heart Association, (2003). Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics. Web.
American Heart Association, (2006). Women and Cardiovascular Disease State Facts: Nevada. Web.
American Stroke Association, (2006). Stroke Facts 2006: All Americans. Web.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, (2003). National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Cardiovascular Health: Heart Disease and Stroke Maps. Web.
Cowley, S. M. & Houston, A. A. (2003). A structured health needs assessment tool: Acceptability and effectiveness for health visiting, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 43,1–10.
Peckover, S. D. (2003). Supporting and policing mothers: An analysis of the disciplinary practices of health visiting, Journal of Advanced Nurisng, 38 369-77.