Objective: The objective was to investigate the relationships between symptoms distress, depression, social support, and self-care ability in heart failure patients.

Methods: The descriptive with cross-sectional design was used in the study.

Setting: The study took place at a teaching hospital from Aug. 10, 2006 to Aug. 30, 2007 in the north of Taiwan.

Sample: Totally, 77 outpatient department heart failure patients were recruited. The instruments used included heart failure's demographic data, symptoms distress scale, depression scale, social support scale, and heart failure self ability scale were used. The symptoms distress scale scored from 1 to 5. In addition, depression scale, social support scale, and heart failure self ability scale scored from 0 to 3. SPSS for Windows 10.0 was used to analyze data.

Result: The 77 patients most were elderly (mean age 68.03 years), male, and adequate income. In the self-care ability score, the mean score value was 46.71. The items of highest and lowest scores were medication care and sleep status, respectively. In the demographic variables, the self-care ability was significantly correlated with the status of adequate income (r = 2.35, p < .05), depression (r = -0.36, p < .001),and social supports from the family and health provider team (r = 0.38, p<. 01; r = 0.32 p<. 001). Multivariate analysis showed that the

supports from the family and health provider team social

support were the most important and independent parameter correlated with the self-care ability (22% of the variance could explain).

Conclusions: This study suggested that a well-designed combination of social supports from both family and society could substantially improve the self-care quality in patients with heart failure. The heart failure care team might raise their care efficiency by targeting on this specific therapeutic intervention.