The Effect of Multimedia Symptom Management Program on Coping Strategies and Quality of Life in Patients with Heart Failure

Background: The incidence of heart failure is increasing in recent twenty years. Most of patients with clinical symptoms delay the best timing for treatment due to lack of coping capability. Despite many domestic researches focus on the clinical issues of heart failure patients, there was no study to investigate the effect of multimedia symptom management program on improvement of coping strategies in patients with heart failure, and increasing quality of life in patients with heart failure.

Purpose: This study aims to examine the effect of multimedia symptom management program on improving coping strategies and quality of life in patients with heart failure.

Methods: Total 78 subjects were enrolled from a cardiovascular out-patient department in a medical center. The 36 subjects were randomly assigned to the experimental group (EG) and 42 subjects to the control group(CG). The subjects in the experimental group received multimedia symptom management program in symptom management, while the subject in the control group received traditional nursing instruction. The subjects were evaluated once a month for four times. The instruments included Brief-COPE and Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire (MLHFQ). The Generalized estimating Equation (GEE) was used to analyze the effect of this multimedia symptom management program.

Results: Total of 78 heart failure patients participated in this longitudinal experimental study. There were statistically significant more problem oriented coping strategies (p< .001) and less emotional oriented coping strategies (p< .001) performed in the experimental group, compared with the patients in control group.(2) There was statistically significant greater improvement on quality of life in the experimental group compared with control group (p< .001).

Conclusions: The multimedia symptom management program may help heart failure patient more frequently use the problem oriented coping strategies to deal with their symptoms, and then improve their life quality. Clinical professionals can provide this program to heart failure patients to improve patient’s outcomes and the clinical care quality.