Investigating the role of nurses in the process of cardiac rehabilitation among the elderly

Background: The process of cardiac rehabilitation is executed in three different stages: from hospital to home in order to improve the level of ability and the patients’ quality of life after cardiac events, and change the lifestyle. One of the important ways to cope with the risks of cardiovascular diseases is coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery. After surgery, all patients undergone the coronary artery bypass grafting surgery as well as other cardiac patients require cardiac rehabilitation cares. Nurses play a crucial role in this process, which has been examined and analyzed in this study.Materials & Methods: Considering the research question: What is the role of nurses in the process of cardiac rehabilitation among the elderly , the present study is a review article which was carried out by searching in the databases of Iranmedex, google scholar, SID, pubmed, and scopus. In this search, studies that were published in the period from 2008 to 2018 and included the words of rehabilitation and cardiac rehabilitation among the elderly in their titles, were considered. The studies were evaluated and the findings in question were extracted.Results: The results show that cardiac rehabilitation increases cardiac output, decreases mortality and depression, improves mental rehabilitation and patient s quality of life. Cardiac rehabilitation is performed in three steps. Diet education, way of controlling stress, and identifying risk factors are provided in the first stage, and training of patient s compliance with the disease and changing the lifestyle in the second stage. In the third stage, more time is designed and implemented to spend on training for preventing problems. In this process, nurses can play a role as a coordinator, and also assist the rehabilitation team, because this group is always in close contact with the patient, his family, and other members of the treatment team. Studies demonstrate that most coordination is done by nurses during cardiac rehabilitation. Cardiac rehabilitation nurses provide services such as counseling, training, physical and spiritual care, helping the patient to manage stress, developing safe and healthy activities, and proper diet for cardiac patients.Conclusion: Nurses pay attention to all three psychological, biological, and social aspects of patients in the cardiac rehabilitation program, but they are less concerned with spiritual care in their formal program. One of the important tasks of nurses in the process of cardiac rehabilitation is spiritual rehabilitation of patients. To this end, sufficient attention should be taken to the dimension of individuals’ spiritual care in the spiritual rehabilitation program, and an adequate standard protocol should be defined, designed and implemented, so that nurses can have the maximum of effectiveness in the delivery of cardiac rehabilitation services.

کلیدواژه ها:

cardiac ، rehabilitation ، elderly