A qualitative study of nurses' experiences of self-care counseling in migrant patients with heart failure.
Harshida Patel, Grazyna Szkinc-Olsson, Madeleine Lennartsson Al Liddawi
PMID 34307776WHAT IT FOUND
Nurses found self-care counseling for migrants with heart failure difficult due to language barriers, cultural differences, and low health literacy.
They used creative strategies like drawings, teach-back methods, and professional interpreters to ensure patients understood medication and symptom management.
Key findings
01Language and cultural barriers, along with time constraints, were the primary obstacles nurses faced when counseling migrant patients with heart failure.
02Nurses used non-standard communication tools such as hand-drawn pictograms, body language, and the teach-back method to verify patient understanding when verbal instructions failed.
03Health literacy was identified as a critical determinant of self-care success, with nurses noting that patients often lacked basic understanding of physiological mechanisms like fluid balance.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study was conducted in western Sweden, which may limit transferability to other healthcare systems or cultural contexts. Participants were all female nurses, which may not reflect the experiences of male nurses or other healthcare professionals. Data were collected via Zoom during the pandemic, which may have affected the depth of rapport and non-verbal communication compared to in-person interviews. Nurses may have withheld sensitive information about their struggles or biases out of professional respect for patients.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflict of interest. There was no external funding.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret these findings as evidence that specific counseling techniques improve patient outcomes. This is a qualitative study of nurses' perceptions and experiences; it does not measure the effectiveness of the strategies described on patient adherence or clinical results.