Auditing of Discharge Education to Coronary Angiography Patients

Coronary angiography (CAG) is one of the procedures for diagnosis of coronary artery disease (CAD). It may have severe complications. Providing patient education based on standards can lead to reduction in complication risks and increase patient satisfaction.
Consequently, the present study was conducted to audit discharge education for CAG patients.
In this descriptive study, 387 discharge educations of CAG patients were observed by event sampling. The data were collected using demographic information of nurses and patients and a checklist formulated on the basis of standards for discharge education of CAG patients. This checklist had 35 items in six dimensions. The validity and reliability of the checklist was examined using content and validity and the Inter-rater correlation coefficient (ICC = 97%). The data was analyzed using SPSS20.
The results showed that the discharge education of CAG patients was weak in all dimensions. The highest education was found for the CAG wound care sub-domain. Education of bleeding control education, nurse-patient communication, changing life style education, emergency events education, and drugs usage dimensions were low.
The findings revealed that common CAG discharge education is not satisfactory in comparison with the standards. Factors that may contribute to this failure include not enough nursing staff, lack of education plan at the discharge time and ineffective supervision. Using this checklist is beneficial for better education outcomes. The findings recommend nurses to evaluate the economic, safety, and psychosocial situation of the patients as they may prevent the patient’s and their family’s ability to follow the discharge plans.