This qualitative analysis highlights that while elderly patients with heart failure adapt personally to fatigue, significant societal and systemic barriers remain that hinder their quality of life.
Supports addressing societal barriers in HF fatigue care; leaves open whether systemic interventions improve outcomes.
In this secondary analysis of interviews with people with chronic heart failure, we examine living with fatigue in terms of obstacles and opportunities on personal, systemic and societal levels. On a personal level, people report that their bodies force them to rest, and to give in to and make space in their lives for fatigue. The need for rest is strong, but resting and inactivity are also regarded as dangerous. The healthcare system provides assistance through home care and technical equipment. However, society imposes obstacles, such as a lack of services in the immediate surroundings that prevent living well. In conclusion, people with chronic heart failure can manage their lives on a personal level by means of selection, optimization and compensation, and the healthcare system can provide further support; however, on a societal level there is lack of resources for those suffering from fatigue due to chronic heart failure.
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Lundman et al. (2009) studied this question.
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