Living with heart failure without realising : A qualitative patient study

• Heart failure is an important problem in Swedish primary healthcare as in the UK. In spite of that little is known about how people with heart failure experience support from primary healthcare. This paper investigates how people with heart failure experience support in primary healthcare. Semi structured interviews were conducted with five men and five women, born 1922-1951. The interviews were analyzed with qualitative content analysis in accordance with Graneheim and Lundman (2004). The participants experienced they had not received information about their diagnosis or about the cause of their condition. They had not been informed they had heart failure. Instead the participants believed their symptoms were caused by age, thus being part of normal ageing. They did not experience they needed care or support to cope with illness or disease. Instead their main needs for support in daily life concerned help with practical matters.There is a risk primary healthcare abandons people with heart failure meaning the patients are forced to develop strategies on their own in order to manage symptoms. When inadequately informed there is also a risk they make up their own explanations signifying possible difficulties to handle their health situation.

Ämnesord

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Hälsovetenskap -- Omvårdnad (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Health Sciences -- Nursing (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Heart failure

Patient information

Primary healthcare

Support

aged

article

attitude to health

female

health care delivery

health care quality

human

male

middle aged

primary health care

qualitative research

social support

Sweden

very elderly

Aged

80 and over

Health Services Accessibility

Humans

Quality of Health Care

Medical sciences

Medicin

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)