Quantitative Research
Background of the study
The health issue under study was to investigate the need of an innovated, for that time, nurse facilitated Self-management support for people and their family carers. The purpose of this study was motivated by conflicting evidence of higher effectivity rates of self-management interventions in the management of patients with heart failure. It is shown that patients can have low understanding of their condition and no motivation to pursue any kind of behavioral manual by themselves. Moreover, some people have problems prioritizing their life choices and can be using a well-made manual not of it to help them in increasing their health status. (Meng et al., 2016)
Overview of the research design
The aim of this study was to determine if this newly developed self-management manual that is focused on modifying the behaviour of patients with heart failure is more efficient with it being delivered by heart failure nurses than it being followed by the patients themselves. This was underlined by an experimental design. Due to Glasper and C. Rees, it was an efficient study as a experimental design, because it can give you a permission to have more participants and statistic data is still valuable, as randomisation is pursued. (Glasper, & Rees, n.d.) It added value to the study due to its precision in a wide range of inclusion and exclusion criteria, which are shown in the participants and methods part of the research paper.
Sampling
The sample was composed from people over the age of 18, both males and females. The total count of the participants in the end of the study was 260 patients.
The most important inclusion criteria was having a distinctive diagnosis of symptomatic heart failure left ventricular systolic dysfunction. This diagnosis was defined by ECHO, clinical diagnosis or coronary angiography. This criteria was crucial as to the aim of this study was focused on a newly developed self-management manual that is modifying the behaviour of patients only with heart failure. Providing this inclusion criteria the researchers can be more certain about how the output of this research can be more relevant due to using people with the same diagnosed disease.
The exclusion criteria were based on cognitive deficits. The main ones were being unable to make decisions on their own, not being able to understand English, being unable to give consent. This could alter the resultative part as this manual is self-management. Furthermore, another exclusion criteria was having been provided additional care, like living in nursing homes, for the same reason. Moreover, people who had a life-threatening concomitant condition were also excluded from this research, as they could be altering the result of the research by having a much higher risk of death than other people in the sample.
Participants were chosen after General Practitioners with special interest, heart failure nurses, research coordinators or consultants from open access heart failure diagnostic clinics identified them and gave …
