Cryberchondria Level in Women with Heart Disease and Affecting Factors;

Abstract

Objective: This study was conducted to determine the cyberchondria levels of women being treated for heart disease in training and research hospital and the factors affecting these levels. Materials and Methods: The population of this descriptive and cross-sectional study was composed of 331 female patients, who presented to the Cardiology and Cardiovascular Surgery services of Koşuyolu High Specialized Training and Research Hospital between August 2018 to October 2018. Moreover, the patients who were diagnosed with heart disease were literate, spoke Turkish, and volunteered to participate in the study. Before the sample was selected, data collection was continued until the total number of the sample was met with the patients who were in compliance with the study criteria and willing to participate in the study. Research data were collected by a descriptive data collection form and by the Cybercondria Severity Scale (CST). For the evaluation of the data, number-percentage calculations, the Mann Whitney-U test, the Anova test, and a t-test were used. Results: About 38.7% of women who participated in the study expressed that they searched their diseases on the internet, while 75.8% of them expressed that they watched health related programs. About 8.8% of the participants stated that they underwent extra tests without the physician's recommendations, and 12.7% of them used medication without the physician's recommendation. A total of 25.4% of them believe that the information on the internet was correct and 36% of them said that they sometimes made decisions about their health issues according to that information. The average CST score of the women was found to be 68.00±27.04. An increase in the anxiety related to behaviors such as online searching and self-evaluation about health issues was determined at a low level. No statistically significant difference was found between the participants' marital status, watching health-related programs on TV, taking tests and medicines without the physician's recommendations, and the CST average score (p>0.05). The anxiety of the participants who were over and under 50 years old, had graduated from high school or a higher level, were employees, whose income levels were at the middle and higher level, had children, had never been operated, had been diagnosed with a disease for less than a year, and believed that the information on the internet was correct and made a decision according to this information, was increased due to the online searching and self-evaluation behaviors about health issues (p<0.05). Conclusion: Nurses should take an active role in training patients who are being treated for heart disease, by eliminating the need for information and directing patients to reliable information sources. @ Archives of Health Science and Research.All rights reserved.