Signs and symptoms of heart failure.

Heart failure (HF) disease management is complex and involves fluid and sodium restrictions, lifestyle changes, pharmacotherapy, and recognizing signs and symptoms. It is a daunting task for patients to learn how to manage their disease. Effective patient education is therefore crucial to enhance patient adherence. Written patient educational materials have always been an important adjunct in patient education. However, studies have reported that current health-related educational materials are written at readability levels that do not take into account that most patients are older with limited literacy. Furthermore, educational materials are overall poorly designed with illustrations that are not age or culturally sensitive, that overuse medical jargon and that have inappropriate use of language. Meanwhile, patient knowledge deficit continues to be a major obstacle in HF disease management. This project provides a patient educational poster that is based on the guidelines recommended in the literature. The objective is to increase patient’s knowledge for the purpose of recognizing as well as promptly reporting these signs and symptoms of HF and ultimately decreasing preventable readmissions to the hospital.