Abstract:
The purposes of this study were to investigate dyspnea in heart failure patients and to determine the factors that predict of dyspnea. The conceptual framework was based on the Theory of Unpleasant Symptoms. A convenient sample of 122 heart failure patients was recruited from three tertiary hospitals. All participants responded to set of six questionnaires: demographic questionnaire, the Brief illness Perception Questionnaire, The Control Attitudes Scale-Revised, the social support questionnaire, The Revised European Heart Failure Self-care Behaviour scale revised into a nine-item scale, and the Dyspnea questionnaire. All instruments were tested for content validity by five experts, and their reliability were 0.8, 0.8, 0.77, 0.8 and 0.82 respectively. Descriptive statistics, Pearsons product moment correlation coefficient and enter multiple regression were used in data analysis. The study findings can be summarized as follows: 1. The average dyspnea score for the sample of heart failure patients was 19.49 +/- 23.88. The qualities of symptoms are shortness of breath, breathing more, breath does not go in all the way, breathing rapid and breath does not go out all the way. 2. There was a positive correlation between illness perception and dyspnea in patients with heart failure (r=.336; p-value <.05). In addition, a negative correlation between perceived control and dyspnea was found (r=-.291; p-value <.05). 3. Age, self-care and social support were not significant correlated to dyspnea in patients with heart failure 4. Illness perception and perceived control were a significant predictor, accounting for 18 percent of the variance in dyspnea.