Introduction:  Improvement of the quality of life is one of the main objectives of treatment in patients with heart failure. Educational intervention for family members of patients with health problems, leads to reduced distress and discomfort. This study which is aimed at determining the effect of integrated group education program on quality of life of family members of patients with heart failure, was conducted in Zanjan.
Methods:  This study is a randomized controlled trial. The study population included family members of patients with heart failure admitted to the CCU and Heart Wards of Ayatollah Mousavi Hospital. 92 family members of patients were eligible to participate in the study. Family members of inpatients were selected by convenience sampling and randomly divided into control and intervention groups. Before randomization, participants completed initial questionnaire and then were divided in two groups of 46. The participants were asked to fill out questionnaires three times during one year. Hospital anxiety and depression questionnaire was used to measure anxiety and depression. Nottingham Health Profile questionnaire was used to measure quality of life. To determine the reliability and validity of questionnaire were used test retest and content validity respectively. Data was analyzed by SPSS 22. The K-2 test and the gamma correlation coefficient were used to compare the two groups according to the demographic characteristics of the patient's family members and patients, Variance analysis with repeated measures was used to compare anxiety, depression and quality of life in two treatment groups.
Results: The results showed that the anxiety and significantly decreased during the three measurement periods (P<0.001) this decrease was not significant between intervention and control groups. Also the results indicated that quality of life and six dimensions considerable improvement, but these differences were not significant between control and intervention groups. There was a significant difference in the control and intervention groups in depression in the three measurement times (p = 0.001).
Conclusions: To promote disease- related knowledge, a combination of training methods effect on rates of anxiety, depression and quality of life of patients' family members could be used. Our results suggest that intervention aimed at increasing social support may be beneficial for patients' family members. It is recommended that a separate study of the role of nurses in health promotion in relation to other chronic diseases should be studied.