ESSAY: Literature review and Critical Appraisal

This project is proposed to reduce the preventable readmissions of heart failure patients through education techniques. The main focus of this project is to incorporate the best practices of education for the patients and families regarding management of their heart failure which will potentially reduce the readmissions occurring within 30 days of discharge.
Literature Review – Provide the key terms used to guide the search for the evidence and provide at least five (5) summaries of research studies to support the evidence.
Critical Appraisal of Literature – Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence, what is known from the evidence and any gaps in knowledge from the research evidence.

ANSWER

Literature Review and Critical Appraisal

Hospital readmission remains a great challenge in as far as taking care of patients having heart failure is concerned. Even though efforts have been directed towards reducing readmission cases for such patients, statistics still indicate that 20% of patients still undergo readmission within 30 days after they are discharged. This calls for better intervention mechanisms that can help reduce such cases. The use of best education practices for patients and families regarding how to manage heart failure towards reducing instances of readmission is one such effective mechanism. This work evaluates literature that can support this assertion. The strengths and weaknesses of the presented evidence will be…

Literature Review

The use of different education interventions as ways of improving self-care behavior for heart failure patients has recently been demonstrated by Salahodinkolah et al. (2020). The researchers undertook a narrative review study that relies on searchers in relevant databases and defined exclusion criteria to come up with 71 articles from which conclusions were drawn. Some of the educational interventions they discussed were face to face discussions, home visitation and phone follow-ups, training patients in groups as well as e-learning (Salahodinkolah et al., 2020). The obtained results noted significant improvement in self-care behaviors for patients with heart failure. With the change in such behaviors, cases of patient readmission will reduce…