Comparison of self-care behaviors of heart failure patients in 15 countries worldwide

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Clinicians worldwide seek to educate and support heart failure patients to engage in self-care. We aimed to describe self-care behaviors of patients from 15 countries across three continents. METHODS: Data on self-care were pooled from 5964 heart failure patients from the United States, Europe, Australasia and South America. Data on self-care were collected with the Self-care of Heart Failure Index or the European Heart Failure Self-care Behavior Scale. RESULTS: In all the samples, most patients reported taking their medications as prescribed but exercise and weight monitoring were low. In 14 of the 22 samples, more than 50% of the patients reported low exercise levels. In 16 samp..