The Relationship of Respecting Inherent Dignity with Anxiety, Depression, Stress and Quality of Life in Patients with Heart Failure

Respecting inherent human dignity has a prominent role and is of great importance in health care discussions. Respect for people’s dignity is the basis of nursing care and is a step toward increasing patients’ satisfaction with the services provided by the staff.

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship of respect for dignity with anxiety, depression, stress and quality of life in patients with heart failure.

This is a descriptive analytic study. The study population consisted of the patients with heart failure hospitalized at Isfahan University of Medical Sciences from 2017 to 2018. In this research, samples were selected through purposive sampling, consisting of 150 patients with heart failure from the research population. Then personal characteristics questionnaire, Inherent Dignity questionnaire (IDQ), Minnesota Living with Heart Failure questionnaire (MLHF), as well as Depression, Anxiety, Stress scale (DASS) were completed by samples. Statistical analysis was performed using descriptive statistical methods, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, one-way ANOVA and independent t-test.

The mean total score for patients’ inherent dignity was 102.21 out of 144, with a standard deviation of 17.92. Pearson correlation coefficient showed that the total score of the patients’ inherent dignity had no significant relationship with age (P = 0.57) and the number of heart failure-related hospital admissions (P = 0.71). Pearson correlation coefficient showed that the total score of the patients’ inherent dignity had an inverse relationship with their scores of the quality of life (P = 0.002), depression (P = 0.004), anxiety (P = 0.001), and stress (P < 0.001).

Considering the fact that nowadays the improvement of service quality is one of the priorities of healthcare and, on the other hand, as research findings show, respecting the dignity of heart failure patients plays an important role in reducing stress, anxiety, and depression as well as increasing the quality of life, these results can be used in planning to support and improve the treatment, and the care provided for patients, and to guide the future researches regarding the inherent dignity of these patients.