Telephone interventions by nursing students: improving outcomes for heart failure patients in the community

Community care for heart failure patients is difficult due to multiple comorbidities, polypharmacy, and advanced age of patients. Studies show that hospital admissions and emergency room visits decrease with increased nursing interventions in home and community settings. The purpose of this study(1) was to assess the effectiveness of regular telephone interventions by nursing students on outcomes of heart failure patients in the home. Senior students were paired with community nursing staff and assigned 2 heart failure patients to follow up by telephone calls for 12 to 14 weeks. Patients who received telephone interventions had fewer hospital readmissions (13%) than the comparison group (35%). Patients in the telephone intervention group also had fewer overt heart failure symptoms as measured by the Minnesota Living With Heart Failure Questionnaire.