Comparing the Effect of the Patient Education with or without Participation of Family on Adherence to Treatment Regimen in Patients with Chronic Heart Failure

  Adherence to treatment programs is a major challenge in patients with chronic heart failure. In the event of non-compliance, these patients will be associated with adverse health outcomes. Since the interventions such as training to improve adherence to health regimens have a special place, this study aimed to compare the effect of the patients’ education with or without their families’ participation, to evaluate the effect of this education on adherence to the treatment regimen in patients with chronic heart failure. In this quasi-experimental study, 60 patients with chronic heart failure were selected from those referred to the heart clinic of Farshchian Hospital in Hamadan, Iran. The subjects were randomly divided into two groups of 30 patients and their families and 30 patients alone. The training was performed in six 30-minutes sessions with same conditions in both groups. Information was collected using questionnaire before and six weeks after the intervention, and analyzed using SPSS 16. Before training, the two groups had no significant deference in the rate of adherence to the treatment regimen (P>0.05). After training, the rate of adherence to the treatment regimen in the patients’ education group with family participation was higher than the patients’ education group alone (P <0.05). According to the results, it seems that patient education with family participation is more effective than patient education alone. Therefore, educational interventions related to the treatment program in chronic heart failure patients with family participation are recomended.