What are the nutrition education needs of cardiac patients: A mixed method approach

摘要

Background: Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) programs, including nutrition education, reduce mortality, repeat hospitalisation and improve quality of life in patients with coronary heart disease (CHD). Aim: To determine the nutrition education needs of CHD patients by investigating the proportion who received cardiac-specific nutrition education throughout the continuum of care, and their knowledge, perceptions and preferences for cardiac-specific nutrition education. Methods: This was a sequential mixed-method retrospective cohort study of CHD hospital admissions over six-months (n = 366) and subsequent outpatient follow-up and semi-structured face-to-face interviews with 50 hospitalised CHD patients. Interviews were themati-cally analysed. Results: Most CHD admissions received written nutrition education (87%), while far fewer received verbal education (22%). Referrals to CR were high (80% of individual patients), but under half of the individuals referred (47%) attended CR, and only a third received nutrition education. Interviews identified five main themes where patients believed: nutrition education was important for managing their heart condition; nutrition played an important role in their general health; their diet was 'healthy' despite poor nutrition knowledge; however there were barriers to the uptake of cardiac nutrition education, including the belief their existing diet was already healthy; the preferred model of nutrition education was influenced by specific barriers. Conclusions: The results demonstrate that a large proportion of patients who would benefit from nutrition education missed out during hospital admission and did not attend CR post-discharge, despite excellent referral rates. Nutrition education should be prioritised during hospitalisation as an important opportunity to deliver pertinent nutrition information to CHD.