Abstract
Funding Acknowledgements
Type of funding sources: None.
Background
Despite the knowledge of the effect of lifestyle changes in preventing cardiovascular disease, a large proportion of people have unhealthy lifestyle habits. To enhance the care of patients at high cardiovascular risk we started a one-year, structured lifestyle program in primary care.
Purpose
To explore patients´ at high cardiovascular risk and community health nurses´ experiences of lifestyle counselling after participation in a lifestyle program.
Methods
A qualitative explorative design was used to collect data on participants ‘experiences and an inductive content analysis was performed. Sixteen patients (eight men and eight women, aged 51 – 75 years) diagnosed with either type 2 diabetes mellitus or hypertension and three community health nurses were interviewed.
Results
The participants emphasised that lifestyle counselling should be based on partnership where patients and community health nurses collaborates to reach the set treatment and behavioural goals. Five categories describe this partnership; "Collaboration based on respect and mutual interest", "Enable understanding of illness and lifestyle habits", "Measurements and goalsetting are valuable tools", "The value of continuous support" and "Organisation structure should support lifestyle counselling".
Conclusion
Our results indicate that a trustful relationship, increased knowledge on lifestyle habits and how they effect illness, repeated measurements and recurrent support are important for successful lifestyle counselling. Additionally, the organisation of the structured lifestyle counselling needs to be supported by the primary care unit.