Date of Conferral

2019

Degree

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

School

Nursing

Advisor

Patricia Schweickert

Abstract

Heart failure is a complex chronic disease affecting 6.6 million people in the United States, with an annual cost of $39.2 billion per year. African Americans are at an especially high risk for poor outcomes and readmissions from heart failure complications, as they are 2.5 times more likely to develop heart failure than other ethnic groups. This disease requires a high level of patient self-care management, and evidence suggests that African Americans do not always receive culturally sensitive education, which can lead to suboptimal self-care practices. The practice-focused question for this educational program asked whether nurses of African American patients with heart failure could use a culturally sensitive health education toolkit to improve patients’ knowledge of self-care management. The purpose of this doctoral project was to determine if a culturally sensitive toolkit could increase nursing knowledge. The population focus was nurses caring for African American heart failure patients with frequent readmissions from a high-risk heart failure clinic in New Jersey. The use of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and an exhaustive literature review guided this doctoral project. The tool used to assess participants’ pre- and post-knowledge was the cultural awareness and sensitivity tool. There were 11 participants comprised of nurses, nurse case managers, and advanced practice nurses; they exhibited a 1.92% improvement in knowledge after the education session. This outcome shows that this educational program was effective and has the potential to contribute to social change by educating nurses on providing effective, culturally sensitive self-care education to African American heart failure patients to increase their adherence to self-care practices.

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