The Journal of cardiovascular nursing
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Multicenter Study
Validity and reliability of the caregiver contribution to self-care of heart failure index.
Caregivers make an important contribution to the self-care of patients with heart failure (HF), but few instruments are available to measure this contribution. ⋯ The CC-SCHFI showed good psychometric properties of validity and reliability and can be used to measure the contribution of caregiver to HF patient self-care.
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Multicenter Study
Nurses' educational needs for pain management of post-cardiac surgery patients: a qualitative study.
Inadequate knowledge among health care providers is a key barrier to good pain management, and nurses have a major role to provide education to patients. The purpose of this study was to identify nurses' learning needs to prepare patients for managing pain before and after discharge home from cardiac surgery. The overall aim is to develop a pain education intervention for nurses working with cardiac surgical patients. ⋯ Participants identified the most common pain knowledge gaps for patients before and after discharge after cardiac surgery. These data will be used to develop an education intervention for nurses to help their cardiac surgery patients with more effective pain management strategies before and after discharge home.
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Multicenter Study
Expectations, anxiety, depression, and physical health status as predictors of recovery in open-heart surgery patients.
Recovery after open-heart surgery is a complex process that presents psychosocial and physical challenges that continue well after discharge. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among expectations, anxiety, depression, and physical health status (PHS) and to determine predictors of postoperative PHS in open-heart surgery patients. ⋯ Statistical analysis revealed that anxiety (P = .002) and depression (P = .026) scores decreased postoperatively. Significant relationships were found among the preoperative and postoperative variables: expectations, anxiety, depression, and PHS. Analyses also found that preoperative expectations, anxiety, depression, and PHS contributed 38% of the variance of postoperative PHS (P < .001). However, the postoperative variables were not significant predictors of postoperative PHS (P = .075). The findings support the need for interventions to assist patients in developing realistic expectations and for clinicians to screen patients for anxiety and depression before and after surgery. Future research needs to measure PHS at various times postoperatively to identify continued limitations after surgery.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study Clinical Trial
Public defibrillation: increased survival from a structured response system.
The Public Access Defibrillation (PAD) trial was a prospective, randomized, controlled study designed to compare the number of persons surviving to hospital discharge after experiencing an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OOH-CA) among "community units" randomized to receive cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) only or CPR plus an automated external defibrillator (AED). In 24 centers across the United States and Canada, 993 community units, composed of 1260 individual facilities, trained more than 19,000 layperson responders in CPR-only or CPR+AED. ⋯ Use of an AED within this structured response system can increase the number of survivors to hospital discharge after OOH-CA. Trained nonmedical responders can use AEDs safely and effectively.