Background-The Self-Care of Heart Failure Index (SCHFI) is a measure of self-care defined as a naturalistic decision making process involving the choice of behaviors that maintain physiologic stability (maintenance) and the response to symptoms when they occur (management). In the 5 years since the SCHFI was published, we have added items, refined the response format of the maintenance scale and the SCHFI scoring procedure, and modified our advice about how to use the scores.

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The reduction in hospitalizations, costs, and other resource use achieved using standardized telephonic case management in the early months after a heart failure admission is greater than that usually achieved with pharmaceutical therapy and comparable with other disease management approaches.

Background: Self-care is believed to improve outcomes in heart failure (HF) Heart failure (HF) is associated with poor outcomes and self-care is promoted as a way to improve outcomes in this patient population.1 Education intended to promote self-care has become the cornerstone of HF disease management efforts. However, research testing the effectiveness of these interventions is hampered by difficulties in measuring self-care.Self-care is defined as a naturalistic decision making process involving the choice of behaviors that maintain physiologic stability (self-care maintenance) and the response to symptoms when they occur (self-care management). Riegel and colleagues published a clinical tool, the Self-Management of HF scale, 2 based on this definition. That tool was lengthy and designed to be used by clinicians to assess self-management decision making. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability (consistency of measurement) and validity (extent to which the instrument measures what it is intended to measure) of a revised version of that instrument, the Self-Care of Heart Failure Index (SCHFI), a self-report measure comprising 15 items divided into 3 subscales. The SCHFI measures self-care maintenance, self-care management, and self-care self-confidence in a short, focused manner that minimizes subject burden.

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Background: Self-care is essential in people with chronic heart failure (HF). The process of selfcare was refined in the revised situation specific theory of HF self-care, so we updated the instrument measuring self-care to match the updated theory. The aim of this study was to test the psychometric properties of the revised 29-item Self-Care of Heart Failure Index (SCHFI).

Elderly men and those with fewer comorbid illnesses were most successful at HF self-care.