What kind of patient education and self-care support do patients with heart failure receive, and by whom? Implementation of the ESC guidelines for heart failure in three European regions

Background: In order to manage Heart Failure (HF) properly, both pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions including patient education and self-care (SC) support are important. Appropriate health care (HC) professional support is necessary to improve patient SC-skills. However, little is known which HC-professionals deliver specific education and support in daily HF-care.

Objectives: To describe patient-education and SC-support as perceived by different HC-professionals in three neighboring North-West European regions: Maastricht(the Netherlands), Noorder-Kempen(Belgium), Aachen (Germany).

Methods: Semi-structured interviews with cardiologists, HF-nurses and general practitioners (GPs) were performed, followed by qualitative content analysis with a five-step approach: 1) familiarization with data, 2) initial coding with an a-priori code manual, 3) structuring of data in main themes, 4) revision and recoding of initial codes and 5) synthesizing codes in main themes.

Results: The sample consisted of 15 cardiologists, 35 GPs and 8 HF-nurses. All interviewed HC-professionals provide HF patient-education, yet, the extent differs between them. Whereas HF-nurses identify patient-education and SC-support as one of their main tasks, physicians report that they provide little education. Moreover, little patient education takes place in primary care; with almost none of the GPs reporting to educate patients about SC. GPs in region 2 refer HF-patients to their practice nurse for education and SC-support. None of the HC-professionals reported to provide patients with all key-topics for patient education and SC-support as defined by the ESC.

Conclusion: HF nurses consider patient-education and SC-support as one of their main tasks, whereas physicians pay limited attention to education. In none of the three regions, all recommended topics are addressed.