Background: Chronic heart failure (CHF) is a complex clinical condition. The higher survival rate after heart attack and other heart diseases, plus aging population, has led to more CHF patients. Symptoms can have negative impact on exercise capacity, ability to perform activities of daily living and quality of life. Heart failure clinics have been established to help better quality of life. Helping to stabilize and maintain patients´ health can reduce the need of hospital admission. Nurses´ role is to promote health, treat and relieve symptoms that can lead to better quality of life and self-care. Aim: To describe specialist nurses´ experiences of promoting health for patients with heart failure. Method: A qualitative inductive approach was used to interview six specialist nurses with competence in heart failure caring. The interviews were analyzed by using qualitative content analysis where the interpretation of the text formed eight categories. Results: Categories revealed that each nurse had her own strategy of caring for, supporting and strengthening both patients and kin, such as through communication, medication management, managing self-care, working interdisciplinary. At times the patients' decisions had to be accepted, even if this led to death. Conclusion: Nurses´ caring, supporting and informing roll along with availability was of great importance to the well being of patients and kin. Creating a good relationship was the foundation of a well functioning co-operation between nurse, patient and next of kin which led to a feeling of security for patients. Most important factor was the patient experiencing health at present.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hv-3203 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Florell, Katarina, Rincon Svensson, Jazmin |
| Publisher | Högskolan Väst, Institutionen för omvårdnad, hälsa och kultur, Högskolan Väst, Institutionen för omvårdnad, hälsa och kultur |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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