| This descriptive correlational study based on secondary data analyses described nursing care for patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and determined the relationships between patient characteristics and nursing diagnoses to patient outcomes. The integration of a portion of a risk management model, the Nursing Minimum Data Set (NMDS), and a literature review of AMI patients' outcomes was used to guide the study.; A total 501 records of AMI patients were retrieved from a large database from a community medical center, located in the Midwest during a 3-year period. A total of 400 records were used for analyses. The data for this study were analyzed using descriptive analyses: frequency, percentage, means, and standard deviations, analysis of variance (ANOVA) with Scheffé, Pearsons' product moment correlation, multiple regression, logistic regression, and multinomial logistic regression.; Patients with AMI hospitalized in the study setting were on average elderly, Caucasian, Midwestern, middle income people who tended to be male, married, insured, multiply co-morbid, and discharged to home after hospitalization.; A total of 40 different nursing diagnoses were documented in the acute MI patient records. The number of nursing diagnoses per patient ranged from 1–11, with a mean of 4.9. Ninety-five percent of the patients had ≤7 different nursing diagnoses. The five most frequently documented nursing diagnoses were Knowledge Deficit, Potential for Infection, Altered Health Maintenance, Pain, and Anxiety. There was no significant difference in the mean number of nursing diagnoses across the three-year period.; Twenty-one classes of nursing interventions were documented in patient records. The interventions performed by nurses for patients with AMI belong heavily to the patient education class. The five most frequently documented interventions were Discharge Planning, Infection Protection, Teaching: Disease Process, Teaching: Procedure/Treatment, and Learning Facilitation.; Length of stay (LOS) ranged from 1 to 63 days, with a mean of 5.4 days. AMI patients without complications had a significantly shorter length of stay than did AMI patients with complications and patients who died during hospitalization. No significant differences in LOS were found between the group of AMI patients with complications and the other group of those who died in the hospital.; Considering the entire sample of patients with AMI, age, number of nursing diagnoses, and comorbidity had a significant positive relationships with LOS. These variables explained 12% of the variance of LOS. Only age and number of nursing diagnoses were found to be significant predictors for mortality rate. Age, number of nursing diagnoses, marital status, and socioeconomic status had some effect on discharge disposition. However, age was found to be the consistent predictor of need for further care after being discharged from the hospital.; The results of this study have described nursing care provided for hospitalized patients with AMI and demonstrated that data related to nursing diagnoses are a valuable source for explaining patient outcomes. Future research on nursing care contributions to patient outcomes of diverse populations are needed to further understand the patient hospitalization event. An expansion of elements included in the NMDS and the linkage of the NMDS with current healthcare data bases are recommended. |
