CONGRESS ABSTRACT

Background: Collecting self-generated health and lifestyle data is a valuable opportunity to develop understanding of long-term health conditions and identify areas where patients need support. Barriers remain to the effective sharing of health and lifestyle data by patients. The DIMACC (Dimissioni Accompagnate, i.e. Accompanied Discharge) project is a prospective quality improvement study to improve the follow-up of patients admitted to our ward for Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI) or Acute Heart Failure (AHF) according to the international guidelines (Figure).    Aim: To describe the nurses’ experience and strategies to collect reliable information on patients’ lifestyles and give them advice. Methods: During the waiting time before the visits the patients complete a booklet where they report, among other informations, the fruit, vegetables, fish and olive oil consumption for AMI patients and the intake of water, alcohol and salt for AHF patients, physical activity, smoke. During the nursing and medical visits the information reported are discussed with the patients and the achievement of health targets is reviewed according to what agreed on at discharge. Results:   Over the first 6 months (1.11.22-30.04.23) 168 patients were included and 150 followed up for one year. Some patients are reluctant to describe their experience and share failures. The strategies to obtain reliable information include: putting the patient at ease, by creating a safe space; recognising that achieving or maintaining health goals may be challenging, and the same difficulties are shared by many others; stay away from judgemental terms, be respectful and offer the patients the chance to talk about their condition and problems encountered. Though this information collection has the potential to add to the workload and may require time to analyse or make sense of the data provided, the 30 minutes of nursing time allotted, allows not only a reliable data collection but also a good supply of advice, even if some patients may require more than 30 minutes. Conclusions: The increased contact time with patients, up to 1 hour for the medical and nursing visits, allows to collect information, explore lifestyles and health targets agreed on at discharge and to provide counselling interventions. Benefits to patients from discussing health and lifestyle data with health professionals include the potential for greater patients’ autonomy and better overall health outcomes.