Programa de educación en autocuidados en Cardiopatía Isquémica

Abstract

Cardiac rehabilitation programmes have shown to improve the life quality and the prognosis of people with ischemic heart disease. Health education is one of the three components of this programme, along with physical fitness and psychological support. This programme’s objectives are, to promote the self-care, co-responsibility and autonomy of these patients; to improve the quality of life; to decrease, if possible, recurrences and complications. In this case, it’s about an education programme for individual-level health, intended for people who have experienced an acute myocardial infarction or a stable angina, within the last 4 months. It consists of 9 individual sessions with the primary care nurse, once a week. Each session has 3 parts: Evaluation of the adherence to therapeutic plan; assessment of the knowledge, attitude, and skills of the patient on the top ic; development of the relevant educational content, including the delivery of a form summarizing the subject. The experience developed, indicates excellent results in the satisfaction of both patients and health professionals. When the intervention is rig ht after a stroke, the patients will have high levels of motivation and adherence to the programme and to the changes of habits and attitudes. An increase in the level of knowledge and self-care capacity was also observed. Primary care nurses should active ly participate in the secondary prevention of cardiovascular illnesses, by using educative structured programmes.