Scientific Journal of Nursing, Midwifery and Paramedical Faculty

Background and Aim: Heart failure is a chronic disease that requires a lifetime of special care behaviors. In order to deal with disease problems, these patients need to have self-care behaviors. Therefore, this study was designed and conducted to determine the status of self-care behavior and its related factors.

Materials and Methods: This correlation study was conducted on 150 patients with heart failure who were chosen purposively and were hospitalized in the cardiology ward of Tohid Hospital in Sanandaj city. Two questionnaires were used to collect data. The first one was demographic questionnaire and information about the disease and the second one was the European scale of self-care behavior of patients with heart failure which were completed through interview with patients. Then the collected data were analyzed by SPSS software version 16.

Findings: The rate of self-care behaviors by patients were mostly moderate (average score of 39.54) and were correlated with level of education, place of residence and education about the disease (P <0.05).  However, its correlation with age, sex, occupation, marital status, level of disease, smoking, drugs and alcohol was not statistically significant (P> 0.05).

Conclusion: The results of the present study indicated that self-care behavior in patients with heart failure was not desirable. Therefore, the necessity of education and its strengthening especially in patients who are poor in this regard is felt.