Background: Chronic heart failure (CHF) remains as a debilitating disease that has high mortality among adults worldwide. CHF negatively impacts an individual's health-related quality of life (HRQoL), but only few studies have investigated such an impact in the Asian population.
Aims: This study aims to investigate the HRQoL of outpatients with CHF and identify its predictors among this group of patients in Singapore.
Methods: This was a cross-sectional, descriptive correlational study. A convenience sampling of 121 outpatients with CHF was recruited from a public hospital over 5 months. The Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire (MLHFQ), Short Form-Cardiac Depression Scale, Cardiac Self-Efficacy Scale, and Medical Outcomes Study Social Support Survey were used to measure the study variables.
Results: There were significant differences in the HRQoL as assessed using the MLHFQ between gender, educational level, and primary caregiver status (p<0.05). Self-efficacy (β=0.637, p<0.001) and depression (β=-0.220, p<0.001) were found to be the predictors of the HRQoL in outpatients with CHF, accounting for 67.9% of variance.
Conclusion: The results of the study indicated that lower levels of self-efficacy and depression predicted poor HRQoL. Nursing care should focus on detecting depressive symptoms in patients with CHF. A program facilitating better self-care is important in CHF management.
Keywords: Chronic heart failure; Depression; Health-related quality of life; Outpatients; Predictors; Self-efficacy.
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