A comparative correlational study of coping strategies and quality of life in patients with chronic heart failure and the general Swedish population.
Annika Nilsson, Marianne Carlsson, Ragny Lindqvist and 1 others
PMID 28694980WHAT IT FOUND
Patients with chronic heart failure reported lower quality of life than general Swedish population data and used more evasive, optimistic and fatalistic coping.
Nurses may ask which coping strategies patients use.
Key findings
01Compared with age- and sex-matched general Swedish respondents, patients with chronic heart failure used more evasive, optimistic and fatalistic coping, while the population group used more confrontative and emotive coping.
02Patients with chronic heart failure rated lower quality of life on all Short-Form 36 scales except the Role emotional scale compared with general Swedish population data from 1994.
03Women used more problem- and emotion-focused coping than men did in both the patient and general population groups.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Cross-sectional design cannot show whether coping, personal characteristics or quality of life caused each other. Only 124 of 287 patients and 798 of 2500 population respondents completed questionnaires, and non-responders were not analysed. There were few women in the patient group, 28 of 124, so findings for women with chronic heart failure are uncertain. The quality of life comparison used general Swedish population data from 1994, not contemporaneous population data. Patients were not grouped by New York Heart Association functional class, so severity of heart failure may affect the results. Regression models explained only part of the variance, and some Jalowiec Coping Scale subscales had low internal consistency. Mean substitution was used for missing coping items, which may have underestimated variance.
Declared interests
No conflict of interest has been declared by the authors.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these coping and quality of life differences as evidence that a nurse-led coping intervention improves outcomes. The study measured questionnaires at one time and did not test any treatment, so it cannot show that changing coping causes better quality of life.