Helping patients cope with the stress of myocardial infarction

The victims of myocardial infarction pose a real challenge to nursing. Effective nursing intervention is based on an understanding of human responses to the stress of heart disease and the series of behavioral changes individuals undergo in an attempt to cope with the stress. Cardiac teaching is an essential aspect of this intervention. After a myocardial infarction, patients first go through two stages on the way to recovery--independency and dependency--before they are receptive to teaching. It is during the next two stages--interdependency and self-dependency--that nurses can use specific behavioral changes of the patients to plan health teaching and to negotiate contracts with them to effect learning and permanent behavioral change.