The effect of nursing follow-up on self-care behaviors of people with chronic heart failure: A randomized clinical trial

This study aimed to investigate the effect of clinical follow-up by a nurse on improving self-care behaviors in people with heart failure.  People with heart failure are frequently hospitalized. One of the main reasons for hospitalization of these patients is the individual's inability to perform self-care behaviors. One of the ways that can help to improve self-care is clinical follow-up of these patients by nurses. This study was a randomized clinical trial which was conducted between October 2015 to May 2016 in Cardiovascular Medical and Research Center in Tehran. Eighty patients were recruited from the patients hospitalized in cardiac intensive care units and randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. Patients in experimental group received clinical follow-up by a nurse every two weeks by phone or in person. The control group received routine follow-up after discharge. Self-care behaviors were assessed by the checklist before intervention and three month after intervention. The data were analyzed in SPSS using descriptive and inferential statistics. The mean score of self-care behaviors, before intervention was 2.64±1.62 in control group and 2.02±1.62 in the experimental group, and there was no statistically significant difference between groups. After intervention, the mean score of self-care behaviors in control and experimental group were 2.38±2.50 and 0.93±7.82, respectively and a statistically significant difference was found between the groups (p≤0.0001). Clinical follow-up by a nurse can improves self-care behaviors in people with heart failure and help to lessen the burden.