Correlation between self-care and social support in people with heart failure

Abstract

Objective: to correlate social support with self-care for people with heart failure. Method: an exploratory, descriptive and cross-sectional study with a quantitative approach, carried out with 63 individuals with heart failure treated at a university hospital's Cardiology outpatient clinic. The data were collected using a structured instrument to obtain sociodemographic data and health conditions; the European Heart Failure Self Care Behavior Scale was used to assess self-care, whose final score has an inverted value, indicating that the lower the score, the better the self-care; and the Medical Outcomes Study Social Support Scale, which, through five dimensions (Emotional, Material, Affective, Information and Social Interaction), indicates that the higher the score, the better the social support. Results: in relation to the sample, there was a higher frequency of males (57.14%), aged 60 or over (60.31%), married or in a stable union (65.07%), with five to eight study years (28.57%), unemployed (82.5%) and retired (57.14%). In relation to self-care and social support, satisfactory mean values of 27.01 (±6.66) and 80.27 (±16.48) were obtained, respectively. When investigating the correlation between social support and self-care, a negative correlation (r = -0.252) was identified, with statistical significance (p ≤ 0.05) between the Information dimension and self-care. Conclusion: it is inferred that the social support Information dimension is significantly related to the self-care of people with heart failure, indicating that self-care increases as the Information dimension increases.