Nurse-led discharge planning, education, and telehealth interventions for improving self-management, quality of life, and adherence in chronic illness: systematic review

Background: Nursing techniques include respiratory rehabilitation, early detection of decompensation signs, palliative care, inhalation medication management, health education, and supporting healthy lifestyles. This review set out to examine the impact of nurse-led hospital or community interventions on the treatment and follow-up of COPD patients. Method: systematic review was carried out in compliance with the PRISMA guidelines. A systematic search was performed for articles published between 2013 and 2016 using the PubMed, Web of Science, and Embase databases. Results and conclusion: The process of discharge planning for COPD patients is effective in increasing the patients' knowledge of the disease and their own well-being. Both inhaler proficiency and adherence to nurse-driven inhaler instruction showed improvement. Evaluating how well the patients utilize inhalers is necessary to determine their educational limitations. A nurse-led telephone intervention is feasible in primary care and may improve patients' health and quality of life. It has not been demonstrated that walking at home with a phone mentor increases exercise capacity. Nurses may employ the PR program to support patients with their discharge plans and to enhance their self-efficacy ratings on all subscales for adults with COPD. Conclusion: Discharge planning process for COPD patients works well in raising the patients' level of awareness about the condition and their quality of life. Positive results were obtained in terms of inhaler proficiency and compliance with nurse-driven inhaler education.