The Effect of Family-Centered Empowerment Model on the Illness Perception in Heart Failure Patients: a Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial

Introduction: Heart failure is a chronic medical condition that, despite the existing therapies, involves different aspects of an individual’s life (such as self-care capability). Illness perception is one of the most important variables which seem to improve the self-efficacy skills in chronic diseases such as heart failure. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effect of family–centered empowerment model on the perception of the illness in heart failure patients. Methods: This interventional study was performed on 70 heart failure patients, assigned into control and experimental groups, admitted to the heart clinic of Hazrate Fatemeh hospital in Shiraz. After the convenience sampling, the patients were divided into two control and intervention groups by block randomization method. For experimental group, the family-centered empowerment modeling was done in 5 sessions. The research materials included demographic information and Brief illness perception questionnaires (B-IPQ). Data were analyzed using SPSS v.13 software. The statistical tests included Wilcoxon, Man-Whitney, and Independent t-test. P value less than 0.05 was considered as significant. Results: In this study, both control and experimental groups were homogeneous with demographic information. Before the intervention in different dimensions of illness perception, all of the values in both groups were the same; However, after the intervention, a significant difference was observed in all of the dimensions of illness perception, except for Time line; so that the most and the least changes were related to the concern (1.09 (0.61) vs 3 (0.93)), and identity dimensions (0.97 (0.61) vs 2.11 (0.67)), respectively. Conclusion: On the basis of the above, it can be concluded that this model modifies the illness perceptions in heart failure patients. Cardiac nurses should consider family- based empowerment model as a treatment for heart failure patients