Self-care behaviors and related factors in cardiovascular patients: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate self-care behaviors and related factors in cardiovascular patients. This cross-sectional study was conducted to determine the self-care behaviors of patients with cardiovascular diseases in the heart center of Mazandaran province in 2015. The data collection tool was a two-part questionnaire. The first part of the questionnaire was demographic information (age, sex, level of education, duration of hospitalization, occupation, disease diagnosis, hospitalization department, and marital status). The second part included a 12-question European Heart Failure Self Care Behavior questionnaire, each item of which is graded from 1 to 5 based on a Likert scale. A total of 268 cardiovascular patients participated in this study. The mean age of patients was 58.37 (SD=11.95). Among the participants, 52.61% were male, 86.19% were married, and 65.67% were literate. Hypertension was present in 52.61% of them and the average duration of cardiovascular disease in them was 5.10 (SD=4.39). The mean of self-care was 29.00 (SD=6.76). 141 people (52.61%) had good self-care behaviors, 121 people (45.15%) had moderate self-care behaviors, and 6 people (2.24%) had poor self-care behaviors. In the context of the relationship between demographic variables and self-care behaviors, no statistically significant relationship was observed (P>0.05). The most self-care behaviors were related to going to the doctor or health centers in case of shortness of breath, taking medicines as recommended by the doctor, allocating enough time to rest, and the least self-care behaviors were related to regular exercise, influenza vaccine injection, and easy handling in case of shortness of breath. Therefore, teaching patients about the importance and how to perform self-care behaviors is very effective in promoting these behaviors and as a result, reducing mortality and hospitalization costs, and nurses play an important role in teaching these behaviors.