The purpose of the study is to determine the effectiveness of an intervention among home health aides caring for adults admitted to home care with a primary diagnosis of heart failure at VNS Health Partners in Care (home care agency). The study will examine the interventions' effect on home health aides' heart failure knowledge and confidence caring for adults with heart failure, as well as on the client's overall health (visits to the emergency department and hospital readmissions).
The investigator's central hypothesis is that an intervention that can optimize and improve the experience of home health aides caring for the heart failure patients has the potential to improve home health aides' own self-efficacy, heart failure knowledge, and also patient outcomes. The intervention for home health aides is comprised of a) remote classroom education on heart failure and b) an mHealth app containing HF educational content and a messaging application that connects HHAs and their nurse supervisors. This intervention requires feasibility and acceptability testing, as well as preliminary testing of its effectiveness among home health aides caring for community-dwelling adults with heart failure.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
Masking
SINGLE
Enrollment
105
The mHealth app will provide heart failure-specific education to home health aides and allow them to report clinical observations and ask nurses questions in real-time.
Virtual training course on heart failure for home health aides.
VNS Health Partners in Care
New York, New York, United States
Change in Heart Failure Knowledge
As measured by the Dutch Heart Failure Knowledge Scale, scores range from 0-15; higher scores indicate greater heart failure knowledge.
Time frame: Baseline (0 days); at follow-up (90 days)
Change in Heart Failure Caregiving Self-efficacy
As measured by the Caregiver Contribution to Self-Care in Heart Failure Index, which is a 22-item scale which assesses maintenance, management, and self-efficacy sub-scales separately. Each sub-scale score ranges from 0-100, with greater scores indicating greater contribution to care or self-efficacy.
Time frame: Baseline (0 days); at follow-up (90 days)
Change in Job Satisfaction
As measured by the Work Domain Satisfaction Scale, which is a 5-item scale that measures: 1) job satisfaction among care workers; and 2) examines the associations with work environment factors, work stressors, and health issues. Scores range from 5-20, with higher scores indicating stronger satisfaction.
Time frame: Baseline (0 days); at follow-up (90 days)
Change in Intention to Leave
As measured by the Turnover Intention Scale, which is a 2-item scale that measures workers' intentions of 1) leaving their current job (at their agency) and 2) searching for a new job (in another field) in the next year. ) Responses for both included a 7-point likert scale of: very strongly disagree, strongly disagree, disagree neutral, agree, strongly agree, very strongly agree. Both questions were dichotomized into "agree", "strongly agree", and "very strongly" vs. all other responses.
Time frame: Baseline (0 days); at follow-up (90 days)
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