Clinical Study Predictors of Better Self-Care in Patients with Heart Failure after Six Months of Follow-Up Home Visits

Copyright © 2013 Melina Maria Trojahn et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This study aimed to examine the predictors of better self-care behavior in patientswith heart failure (HF) in a home visiting program. This is a longitudinal study nested in a randomized controlled trial (ISRCTN01213862) in which the home-based educational intervention consisted of a six-month followup that included four home visits by a nurse, interspersed with four telephone calls. The self-care score was measured at baseline and at six months using the Brazilian version of the European Heart Failure Self-Care Behaviour Scale. The associations included eight variables: age, sex, schooling, having received the intervention, social support, income, comorbidities, and symptom severity. A simple linear regression model was developed using significant variables