Palliative Care in Heart Failure: An Integrative Review of Nurse Practice

Abstract

Introduction: Because it is a chronic disease of progressive evolution, heart failure requires nursing attitudes and practices that are articulated with palliative care, implemented in an interdisciplinary team along with patients and their families. Objective: Identifying nurses’ attitudes and practices in palliative care in cardiology. Method: Integrative literature review. The searches were carried out in the following bases: Google Scholar, Virtual Health Library, LILACS, SciELO, Embase, MEDLINE, CINAHL, and Scopus; through the terms Palliative Care AND Cardiology AND Nursing. Results: We identified 1298 studies published in the last five years, 14 of which have been selected for the scope of this review. Nurse attitudes and practices were characterized as: approach to symptom control; promotion of comfort and well-being; integrality of care and family orientation; effective communication among patients, family members and nursing team; timely evaluation for palliative care. Most of the studies included in this review have evidence level 2C (n = 7) and 2B (n = 4). Therefore, the results can be interpreted as reliable. Conclusions: This study makes important contributions to the practice of nurses in palliative care for heart failure. Based on the evidence collected, nurses can develop actions with the nursing team and with the interdisciplinary team related to direct patient and family care, as well as professional training. However, the field lacks studies showing the practices and actions implemented by the nursing team.