A patient self-assessment tool for cardiac rehabilitation.

A patient self-assessment tool was designed, tested, and implemented to promote cardiac-specific data collection, based on Gordon's Functional Health Patterns, to maximize patient/family involvement in determining a plan of care, and to streamline primary nurses' documentation requirements. Retrospective and concurrent chart reviews provided data for quality assurance monitoring. The results of the monitoring demonstrated that the self-assessment tool markedly improved the patient-specific data base.