The Impact of an Educational Intervention on the Self-Care of Patients with Myocardial Infarction

 Self-care is becoming increasingly popular due to rising medical costs, isolation from family, and rising hospital infections. Therefore, the current research aimed to investigate the impact of psychological intervention training based on the protection motivation theory (PMT) on the self-care of patients with myocardial infarction (MI).

 The current study utilized both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The quantitative section was quasi-experimental, with pre-test and post-test design and control group. In 2021, 106 patients with MI were selected for statistical analysis at Ibn Al-Bitar Specialized Hospital for Cardiac Surgery in Baghdad, Iraq. Using SPSS software, the Shapiro-Wilk test was used to examine the normality of the distribution of the variables, Levene's test was utilized to investigate the equality of variances, and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was utilized to evaluate the study.

 The results of a one-way ANCOVA indicated that the subscales, including proper diet (F = 42.53, P < 0.001), non-smoking (F = 7.81, P < 0.001), physical activity (F = 55.96, P < 0.001), adherence to prescribed medication regimen (F = 91.65, P < 0.001), and adjusting the effect of stressful variables (F = 27.74, P < 0.001) improved significantly.

 PMT, by improving various aspects and subscales of self-care in patients with MI, can be used as an effective educational intervention to help improve these patients' lifestyles and return them as quickly as possible to normal life.