The relationship between knowledge and family member's performance in confront with patient's heart attack

The aim of this study was to determine the family members’ performance in confront with patient''s heart attack and its relationship with their knowledge in this filed. Heart attack is one of the most common، serious and fatal diseases. It is growing rapidly worldwide and is the most leading cause of mortality. The performance of people who deal with the heart attack patients in the early minutes، is important in prognosis of disease and his/her life and death. This correlational descriptive study was conducted on 300 family members of patients with heart attacks who hospitalized in teaching hospitals of Iran University of Medical Sciences. Data were collected by a questionnaire and continuous sampling. Validity of questionnaire was confirmed by content validity and its reliability were confirmed by test retest and by internal consistency (0. 92). The findings showed that there was good level of knowledge، but poor performance of the subjects in confront with patient''s heart attack. There was statisticaly significant correlations between performance and the knowledge (p=0. 004)، but no significant correlations between performance and the knowledge with level of education، age and gender. Despite of good level of knowledge in target community، none of them have good performance in the confront with heart attack patients; therefore it is recommended to educate the public on how to deal with heart attack patients and to perform more studies in this field in order to offer appropriate strategies to promote the knowledge and performance of family members and individuals in society.