Structured Teach-Back Discharge Education and Heart Failure Self-Care: A Quality Improvement Initiative

Heart failure readmissions remain high, often driven by poor understanding of discharge instructions and suboptimal self-care behaviors.

Inconsistent discharge communication, limited patient understanding of discharge instructions, and suboptimal self-care behaviors were identified as key contributors to heart failure readmissions.

A quasi-experimental pre-post quality improvement project assessed the implementation of structured teach-back discharge education in 57 hospitalized patients with heart failure. Self-care behaviors were measured using the European Heart Failure Self-Care Behavior Scale-9 scale. Improvements were observed across all self-care behaviors (P < 0.001), with large effect sizes (Hedges' g = 2.16). At 30 days, 1 of 57 patients (1.8%) was readmitted.

Structured teach-back discharge education is a simple, scalable strategy that may improve patient understanding of discharge instructions, strengthen heart failure self-care behaviors, and support safer transitions of care.