Educational intervention for improving self-care behaviors in patients with heart failure: A narrative review

Heart failure is one of the most common cardiovascular disorders, and as a chronic and progressive disorder, it can disrupt with interpersonal and social relationships, reduce physical activity, and in fact, impair self‑care. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the self‑care behavior of the patients with heart failure with effective interventions. There are several ways to improve self‑care behavior, and educational interventions are one of these methods. Review of educational interventions causes promotion in self‑care behaviors of patients with heart failure. The aim of this study was reviewing the educational intervention for improving self‑care behaviors in patients with heart failure. The present study is a narrative review study that uses a search in databases such as Google Scholar, Cochrane, Science Direct, ProQuest, Springer, SID, Magiran, IranMedex, Web of science, Scopus, and PubMed from 2000 to 2018. Search for articles using Keywords: heart failure, self care, education and training. All articles with educational intervention and clinical trial in Persian and English and articles with full‑text of individual or group training in the database of internal and library were included in the study, and unrelated articles with just abstract were excluded from the study. Seventy‑one articles were finally included, after removing repetitive and nonrelated items. Initially 340 articles were obtained and after reviewing the articles for inclusion criteria, finally 71 articles were included in the study. Educational interventions were divided into four groups: face‑to‑face teach‑back training and home visitation by follow‑up phone call, group training, and e‑learning. The results of this study showed that four abovementioned educational methods significantly improved self‑care behaviors in patients with heart failure. According to the findings of this study, it is recommended to improve self‑care behaviors in patients with heart failure Based on the findings of the study, it is recommended to use oneto- one face-to-face, teach back, home visits with telephone follow-up, group training, and e-learning to improve self-care behaviors in patients with heart failure.