Nurse's knowledge about modifiable and non-modifiable risk factors of heart failure patient in Erbil teaching hospitals

Abstract EN

Background : The changes in cardiac function are associated with heart failure which result in a decrease of cardiac output.

This results form a decline in stroke volume that is due to systolic dysfunction, diastolic dysfunction or a combination of the two.

Nurses can play a role in prevention of heart failure disease by being knowledgeable of the risk factors associated with disease and also, the nurse may be a teacher-motivator for the patient.

The aim of the study is to find out the association between nurse's knowledge about modifiable and non-modifiable risk factors of heart failure.

Methods : A non probability purposive sample was 20 of February, 2014 to 20 of April 2014, 64 subjects, were selected in medical wards and coronary care units in both Hawler and Rizgary Teaching Hospitals.

The study instrument contained of two parts.

Part one included socio-demographic characteristics and part two was observational check list which contained 21 items for nurse's knowledge about modifiable and non-modifiable risk factors of heart failure patient.

Data was analysis by the statistical package for science service (SPSS version 17) was used for data entering and analysis such as S = significant (< 0.05), very highly significant (< 0.000) and non-significant (> 0.05), Percentage, frequency and Chi-square test were used to interpretation.

Results : According to the results, that majority of the sample (67.2 %) were within age group 23-32 years old.

Male were more than female, the majority 83.8 % of them were married and 75 % of them graduates from nursing institute.

Most of them had 1-7 years of experiences.

The study shows very highly significance association of gender and highly significances association of marital status, levels of education and years of experiences in medical ward and coronary care unit.

Conclusion : According to the results, the majority of the samples were within young age group, male more than female, the majority of them were graduated from nursing institution.

Concerning statistical association between age group and nurse's knowledge about heart failure risks shows non-significant, while shows very highly significant within gender and highly significant between nurse's knowledge with their marital status, levels of education and years of experiences in medical ward and coronary care unit.

Recommendation : Training session, continuous education and work shop by world health organization should be conduct for nurses at coronary care unit and medical ward to provide best nursing care for heart failure patient.

Further study should be done to find out the gap between nursing practices and theory topics.