Design: A longitudinal, experimental design was used to compare the differences between standard discharge teaching and a standardized home health care protocol.

Population, sample, setting, years: The population of interest is adults with known cardiac disease. A convenience sampling plan was used to identify 100 subjects admitted to a mid-western hospital between 1998-2001 with a cardiac diagnosis.

Concepts, variable, intervention, and outcome variables: The independent variable was the type of intervention received, either standardized teaching or HHC. The dependent variables included smoking, diet and exercise. Intervening variables included personal factors (age, gender, education, marital status and ethnicity) and behavior-specific cognitions and affect (knowledge level, perceived benefit and social support).

Methods: Subjects were randomly assigned to either the standardized teaching or the HHC intervention. The HHC group received 4 interactions with the HHC agency over a four week period. Data was collected on both groups at discharge, 1 month, 6 months and 1 year after the intervention.

Findings: A repeated measures analysis was used to compare the two groups on the dependent and intervening variables. Results are mixed with differences occurring with different variables at different data collection points. The overall results are that there are no significant differences in the behaviors of subjects who receive the 4 week HHC intervention and those that do not. There were some interesting differences in males and females on the intervening variables.

Conclusions: The HHC intervention was not specific enough to result in long term behavior change.

Implications: Additional research needs to be conducted to identify interventions that will result in long term behavioral change, especially examining the differences in males and females.

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Sigma Theta Tau International
July 22-24, 2004