The influence of dyadic congruence and satisfaction with dyadic type on patient self-care in heart failure

Chronic illness management is increasingly carried out at home by individuals and their informal caregivers (dyads). Although synergistic in concept, the nuances of dyadic congruence in caring for patients with heart failure are largely unexamined.

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of dyadic-type congruence on patient self-care (maintenance, symptom perception, and management) while controlling for actor and partner effects.

This secondary data analysis of 277 dyads consisted of a series of multilevel models to examine the impact of dyadic congruence on a patient's self-care maintenance, symptom perception, and self-care management. Patient-level and caregiver-level data were input into each model simultaneously to account differential appraisals of factors related to the dyad.

Bivariate analyses yielded dyad congruence which was associated with better patient self-care maintenance, symptom perception and management. However, after multilevel models were constructed, dyad congruence was found to be a significant predictor of patient's symptom perception scores, but not self-care maintenance or management scores. Caregiver's satisfaction with the dyad was differentially and significantly associated with self-care - it was inversely associated with patient self-care maintenance and positively associated with patient self-care management.

This is the first study, to our knowledge, reporting that congruence in heart failure dyads is associated with better patient symptom perception and this advances our prior hypothesis that dyad typologies could be used to predict patient self-care performance. Since symptom perception is the key to preventing heart failure exacerbation, screening heart failure patient and caregiver dyads for congruence is important in clinical settings.