Education Commons^™

Teaching Heart Failure Patients A Low-Sodium Diet, Karen Faye Wright

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a progressive medical condition affecting more than 7 million people in the United States (US) with 700,000 new cases reported annually. More than half of those treated for CHF are readmitted at least once a year. The problem addressed by this quality improvement initiative was lack of adherence to low sodium diet (LSD) among CHF patients, knowledge and skill deficit, and excessive 30-day CHF readmissions. The health belief model and the self-care deficit theory guide nurses in acquiring the skills needed to teach LSD. Twelve months of data were selected from 93 CHF readmissions from …