有效的自我照顧行為對協助心衰竭的病人和家庭成員學習成功地與心衰竭共同生活是非常重要的。影響自我照顧的因素與病人的特性、疾病狀況、心理狀況、社會支持、治療因素及健康照護者有關。心衰竭的處置是要務實的及符合病人的需求，對臨床預後才有正面的影響。我們要了解只有增加知識並不能促進病人的自我照顧或臨床預後，必須清楚的教導自我照顧技巧，才能提升心衰竭病人之自我照顧的效能。於本文就心衰竭的生理與診斷、處置和自我照顧與影響自我照顧的因素做介紹。

Effective self-care behaviour is important to help patients and their families learn to live successfully with heart failure. Factors that may affect self-care include patient characteristics, disease condition,
mental status, social support, treatment related issues and healthcare system issues. Interventions must be practical enough for an individual to use independent of outside assistance, flexible enough to re-spond to the specific and differing needs of heart failure patients, and adequately effective in order to impact clinical outcomes positively. We know that increased knowledge alone is unlikely to improve self-care or clinical prognosis and that effective interventions should clearly achieve improved self-care efficacy in heart failure patients. In this article, heart failure physiology and diagnosis, interven-tions, and self-care and factors affecting self-care in heart failure patients are described.