Powerpoint

Azzolin and colleagues (2013) analyzed data from a larger randomized clinical trial to determine the effectiveness of 11 nursing interventions (NIC) on selected nursing outcomes (NOC) in a sample of patients with heart failure (HF) receiving home care. A total of 23 patients with HF were followed for 6 months after hospital discharge and provided four home visits and four telephone calls. The home visits and phone calls were organized using the nursing diagnoses from the North American Nursing Diagnosis Association International (NANDA-I) classification list. The researchers found that eight nursing interven­tions significantly improved the nursing outcomes for these HF patients. Those interventions included “health education, self-modification assistance, behavior modification, telephone consultation, nutritional counselling, teaching: prescribed medications, teaching: disease process, and energy management” (Azzolin et al., 2013, p. 243). The researchers concluded that the NANDA-I, NIC, and NOC linkages were useful in managing patients with HF in their home.

Relevant Study Results

Azzolin and colleagues (2013) presented their results in a line graph format to display the nursing outcome changes over the 6 months of the home visits and phone calls. The nursing outcomes were measured with a five-point Likert scale with 1 = worst and 5 = best. “Of the eight outcomes selected and measured during the visits, four belonged to the health & knowledge behavior domain (50%), as follows: knowledge: treatment regimen; compliance behavior; knowledge: medication; and symptom control. Significant increases were observed in this domain for all outcomes when comparing mean scores obtained at visits no. 1 and 4 (Figure 1; p < 0.001 for all comparisons).

The other four outcomes assessed belong to three different NOC domains, namely, functional health (activity tolerance and energy conservation), physiologic health (fluid balance), and family health (family participation in professional care). The scores obtained for activity tolerance and energy conservation increased significantly from visit no. 1 to visit no. 4 (p = 0.004 and p < 0.001, respectively). Fluid balance and family participation in professional care did not show statistically significant differences (p = 0.848 and p = 0.101, respectively) (Figure 2)” (Azzolin et al., 2013, p. 241). The significance level or alpha (α) was set at 0.05 for this study.