Patients and Their Families' Perceptions of Living with Heart Disease: A Qualitative Content Analysis

Background: The aim of this study was to understand patients and their families about living with heart disease. Method This study was a qualitative content analysis study in hospitals in Karaj, Iran. Sixteen patients with heart disease were interviewed. Purposeful sampling method was used in this study. In order to collect data, unstructured interviews were conducted and data were analyzed based on five steps of Granheim and Lundman. Results Data analysis led to the formation of two main categories or themes: "perception of disorder and crisis in life" and "Patient and family abandonment in the care knowledge gap." Cardiac patients experience life-threatening disorders and crises following the disease as a feeling of "inability to control daily life” Which is accompanied by a feeling of physical disability and despair caused by lost physical strength As well as the "confrontation with a vague and disturbing future" which is accompanied by fear of imminent death, fear of disability and a sense of hopelessness for the future, They also experience financial harm and stress in the family as “financial inability to meet living and medical needs”, “unpaid expenses”, and “loss of financial resources”.. Patients and their families also perceive the feeling of being left in a care knowledge gap as "receiving insufficient knowledge of the disease and caring for it" and "facing neglect of family education in the health system." And "receiving insufficient knowledge" as "lack of knowledge about the disease" and "following the incorrect advice of others in self-care". Conclusion Heart patients and their families suffer from financial, physical, psychological and educational crises that have a very unpleasant effect on them and these crises are able to increase the physical and psychological pressures on patients many times over. Of course, sometimes physical disabilities are added to them with old age and complicate the problems. The findings show that there is an urgent need to adopt strategies that can effectively help the patient and her/his family in the face of these crises.