title: [Factors related to self-care in heart failure patients].
abstract: Effective self-care behaviour is important to help patients and their families learn to live successfully with heart failure. Factors that may affect self-care include patient characteristics, disease condition, mental status, social support, treatment related issues and healthcare system issues. Interventions must be practical enough for an individual to use independent of outside assistance, flexible enough to respond to the specific and differing needs of heart failure patients, and adequately effective in order to impact clinical outcomes positively. We know that increased knowledge alone is unlikely to improve self-care or clinical prognosis and that effective interventions should clearly achieve improved self-care efficacy in heart failure patients. In this article, heart failure physiology and diagnosis, interventions, and self-care and factors affecting self-care in heart failure patients are described.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nursing, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC. hlliou@vghtpe.gov.tw
authors.forename: Huey-Ling
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Liou
authors.forename: Shu-Chin
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Shu-Chuan
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Hsu
mesh_terms: D006333:Heart Failure / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans; D012648:Self Care