self-care behaviour of the elderly with heart failure and its associated factors in hospitals of gonbad kavus in 2018

Background: heart failure is a common chronic disease and the cause of the elderly's mortality worldwide. it has imposed a high financial burden on health systems and families. self-care is an important aspect of nursing and treating such patients. the aim of study was to determine the self-care behavior and its association with demographic and clinical factors in the elderly with heart failure. methods: the cross-sectional study was conducted on 120 elderly with heart failure, admitted to cardiology wards of khatam al-anbia, shohada, and payambar azam hospitals of gonbad kavus county in 2018. the convenience sampling method was used to recruit participants. for data collection the miller self-care behaviour scale and the elderly's demographic information checklist were used. data were presented in descriptive statistics, and analyzed using anova, independent t-test and spearman's correlation test in spss ver 16. the significant level was used p<0.05.results: the self-care scores were 66.08±8.44 for hf elderly patients. the self-care behavior score were 68.25±1.01 and 64.12±0.7 in women and men respectively (p=0.004). there were no significant correlations between the elderly's scores of self-care with ejection fraction percentages and education levels. conclusions: the mean scores of self-care in the elderly with hf were low. therefore, the self-care of the elderly with heart failure should be improved by training.