Background: Some symptoms such as fatigue and dyspnea decrease the quality of life in patients with heart failure. The effectiveness of self-management programs on management of chronic conditions was discussed. So, this study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of self-management program based on 5A model on fatigue and dyspnea in patients with heart failure.
Methods: In this clinical trial study, 60 patients with heart failure were included. The intervention group underwent self-management program based on 5A model and the control group received routine care. All the enrolled patients were evaluated once at baseline and once after 3 months using fatigue severity and Borg dyspnea scales. The obtained data were analyzed using SPSS software version 16 by descriptive statistics and independent t-test, covariance test, and paired sample t- test. The significance level was set at 0.05.
Results: There was no significant difference in the mean scores of fatigue and dyspnea at the beginning of the study between control and intervention groups (p > 0.05), but 3 months after intervention a significant difference was found in mean scores of fatigue and dyspnea between two groups, (p < 0.05). The difference between pre- and post-intervention scores in terms of the dyspnea and fatigue variables was significant based on the result of paired sample t-test (p < 0.05).
Conclusion: According to the results of this study, self-management program based on 5A Model can be used to reduce the severity of fatigue and dyspnea as well as improve the quality of life in patients with heart failure (Tab. 4, Fig. 1, Ref. 33).
Keywords: 5A self-management model self-management.; dyspnea; fatigue; heart failure.