Journal of Clinical Trials
Open Access

Development of a heart failure self-management program: Design of a randomized controlled trial

International Conference on Clinical Trials

July 27-29, 2015 Orlando-FL, USA

Jung-Hua Shao

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: J Clin Trials

Abstract :

Background: Heart failure (HF) is a chronic, disabling disorder which is mainly found in older people is one of the leading causes
of hospitalization and read mission around the world. Self-management (SM) is an approach to care of those with chronic illness
and therefore has potential to decrease HF patients hospitalization and costs and also to enhance these patients quality of life, selfcare
and self-efficacy.
Aim: The study aims are to develop, implement and examine the effects of a SM intervention in older people with HF, over a 12
months follow-up.
Methods: An experimental design will be used. One hundred and fifty subjects from two medical centers of Taiwan will be randomly
assigned to the intervention and control groups. In order to examine the effects of SM, data collection at baseline, three months,
six months and twelve months will include the following instruments: Self-efficacy for salt and fluid control, HF SM behavior,
HF-related symptoms, depressive symptoms, HF-related quality of life, daily weight monitoring and HF-related health services
utilization. An individualized self-management training program will be implemented for the intervention group. Furthermore,
this program will emphasize self-monitoring of diet control for heart failure. The aim is to improve patient’s self-efficacy for their
diet control behavior. The “diet control” in this study will focus on sodium and fluid restriction. Outcome measures of this study
will be analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics with the generalized estimating equations (GEE) analysis. The findings
of this study would generate an effective SM model for health professional to facilitate HF patients the development of self-care
capability and improvement of health-related outcomes.

Biography :

Jung-Hua Shao during her PhD degree greatly improved her research skills. After starting her career, she is interested in self-management program, especially for
elderly people with chronic disease. She got two research grants from government in Taiwan that support her to process the self-management program for elderly
people with heart failure and osteoarthritis. Moreover, she has published research results in different journals already. Those experiences led her to think about
continuing to do research into quality of life for elderly peoples, it also builds up his research practice ability.