Introduction: Nurses, who make up more than 70 percent of the health care team, have an important role in educating the patients. Therefore, the aim of this study is to design an education program for patients admitted to the intensive cardiac care unit and investigate the effect of using it in a preliminary study on nurses working in cardiac care unit.

Materials and Methods: During a library study, patients’ education program was designed. On the next step, it was implemented preliminary in a pre-experimental study of the before and after type in 2015 in cardiac care unit of a selected military hospital. Nurses working in cardiac care unit were entered into the study using complete enumeration method. Educational performance of nurses working in cardiac care unit was investigated before education by the researcher-made checklist consisting of 18 items. Quality content validity of the checklist was determined by 10 professors and experts in the field of education to patients and its reliability was determined on the basis of internal assessment (α=0.869). Patients’ education program was taught to the nurses in the form of three 60-minute sessions and in three working shifts during a two weeks period. 3 days after the implementation of the program, performance of nurses was re-assessed by the same checklist. Data collected was analyzed using the software SPSS ver.15 and descriptive statistics and paired t-test.

Results: The designed patients’ education program in this study included: the development of educational objectives, selection of appropriate education content, selection and implementation of appropriate educational methods and techniques and reviewing the patient’s understanding of the provided education. The mean and standard deviation of the overall performance of nurses before and after the implementation of the program was 27.90±3.479 and 33.20±1.932, respectively. Paired t-test showed that the overall educational performance of nurses has a statistically significant difference (P=0.003).

Discussion and Conclusion: The use of patient education program as a simple and low cost, has a great effect on nurses and also enhance the quality of education.