Susan, an advanced practice nurse in a congestive heart failure (CHF) clinic is reviewing medication lists with patients after discharge from the hospital. She finds that many of the elderly patients are asking questions about what medications they should be currently taking and how to take their medications. Although patients tell her they received a written medication instruction sheet at discharge, they are having trouble reading and understanding the information.
After compiling the feedback from several visits, Susan presents her findings to the nurse manager of the telemetry unit. The unit manager brings Susan’s concerns to the unit shared governance meeting for the staff’s feedback. Ainsley, one of the more experienced nurses, voices a concern about the way the information on the medication instruction sheets is formatted and written. The standard hospital medication information sheets are formatted using single spacing and small fonts. In addition, the instruction sheets use generic terms for the medications and include complicated medical terminology. Sentences are long, and many of the terms are multisyllabic.
The shared governance committee questions whether elderly patients are able to read and understand the information. Because taking the correct dose of medications on the right schedule is important, the manager asks Kristin, the unit’s representative to the hospital’s evidence-based practice committee, to take this problem to the next committee meeting. By doing so, the committee members can review the scope and scale of the problem and explore current evidence related to the readability of instruction material written for elderly patients.
Write a 200–250-word initial post answering the following discussion prompts.
DISCUSSION PROMPTS
Identify at least one additional problem this patient might experience. Provide a brief overview of the problem and how it will negatively impact the patient or their family.
Research EBP guidelines available to address the problem. Provide a summary of at least one guideline that you found. What is the expected outcome, or how will this positively impact the patient or their family?
