Self-care behavior and affecting factors among patients with heart failure in Iran.

OBJECTIVES: To diagnose self-care behavior of heart failure (HF) patients and their correlations with the affecting variables such as age, gender, marriage, educational status, disease duration, left ventricular ejection fraction, and contextual chronic diseases.

METHODS: This descriptive-analytical study was conducted in 5 hospitals of Tehran and Iran Universities of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran between March to April 2006. After providing written consent, 250 eligible patients participated. We used the Persian version of the European Self-Care Behavior questionnaire to collect information. The gathered data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA, independent-t, and other appropriate tests using SPSS software version 11.5.

RESULTS: We found out that only 26% of patients had good self-care and the behavior of ‘I take my medications as prescribed’ was the most performed behavior. These behaviors had a significant reverse relationship with age and re-hospitalization rate, and a direct relationship with other variables (p=0.0001).

CONCLUSIONS: It is necessary to understand self-care behaviors of HF patients, and then offer individual and special educational programs regarding these behaviors, and also to follow these behaviors. Administration of these programs by nurses will raise HF patients' capabilities and quality of life.