Discussion
Very interesting significant results were found in this
study. In this study, female participants had higher total
self-care scores than male participants. This information
suggests that women feel more confident in their abilities
to perform the necessary self-care activities that are required
of them in order to prevent further exacerbations
of heart failure. For example, the self-assurance to understand
and follow a low-sodium diet is one of the main
heart failure treatments utilized to avoid a setback. Chung
et al. (2006) researched adherence differences between
men and women in regard to sodium-restricted diets. The
researchers’ results were similar to the present study in
that women were better at understanding, following, and
maintaining low-sodium diet instructions. Based on the
findings, NPs should provide sodium-restrictive diet education
not only to their male and female patients with
heart failure, but also to the spouses of male patients as
they may be the ones doing most of the food shopping
and meal preparations. Education of the spouse could
then in turn prevent relapses of male heart failure patients.
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