Self-care behaviors and related factors in chronic heart failure patients

Introduction: Heart failure is a chronic disease that requires special lifelong self-care behaviors.These patients require to have self-care behaviors to confront their disease problems. Therefore, this study was designed and conducted to determine the status of self-care behaviors and its related factors. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 150 patients with chronic heart failure who were chosen purposively and were hospitalized in the cardiac wards of Tohid hospital in Sanandaj. Data collection tools included two questionnaires. The first one was a demographic questionnaire and information about the disease. The second one was the European scale of self-care behaviors of heart failure patients which were completed through patient interviews. The collected data was analyzed by using SPSS16. Results: The average rate of self-care behaviors by most patients was (39.54±7.22) and it has correlation with factors such as: Level of education, place of residence and education about the disease (P<0.05).However, its relationship with age, gender, occupation, marital status, class of patients, smoking, drugs and alcohol was not statistically significant (P>0.05). Conclusion: The results of this study indicated that the level of self-care behaviors in patients with heart failure was moderate. Therefore, it is required to train and educate patients with chronic heart failure.