2013 Volume 5 Issue 2 Pages 54-64
Objectives: The purpose of this this study was to clarify the structure of primary causes towards positive attitudes and daily life for the chronic heart failure （CHF） patients who manage their illness well. Methods: To join the study, each subject had to have a physician confirmed diagnosis of CHF during the past year. Subjects also had to be older than 20 years. This is a cross-sectional study that employed a self-administered questionnaire and interviews. Data-analysis consisted of formulating a structural equation model using SPSS & AMOS． Result: 116 CHF patients （72 male and 44 female） participated in this study. The variable “family support system”（“ ” means latent variable） functioned as fundamental variable and linked, indirectly, via “self-care behavior” to “positive attitude toward life”. Goodness of fit indicators in our model were CFI=0.958, RMSEA=0.059, whereas sex adjusted determination coefficients of the “positive attitude toward life” was 17% （20% for men and 25% for women）. This research adds “positive attitude toward life” among patients with CHF to previous research findings that clearly showed that “self-care behavior” prevents frequent hospitalization. Conclusion: A structure stipulating factors of self-care behavior in CHF patients was developed. Future research is needed to clarify the influences of gender and severity of disease research as well as the external validity of the model. Future research into developing interprofessional collaborative support system is needed too.
