Heart failure leads to social isolation and worsens patients' health.

Chronic heart failure is a disease that not only affects the heart, but also limits social life, weakens personal ties, and, in many cases, pushes people into isolation. This social dimension, which has received little attention in internship until now, is the focus of the SHARE Study (Social Chronic Heart failure person-centered cARE intervention), a research by the School Nursing at the University of Navarra, funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities. The purpose the research to study how a person-centered model can improve the well-being, life experience, and health outcomes of those suffering from this disease. 

The study, led by Dr. Maddi Olano Lizarraga and Dr. Jesús Martín Martín, professors and researchers at the School Nursing, evaluates for the first time in Spain the impact of a healthcare intervention that, in addition to treating the disease, focuses on the patient's life experience: their fears, relationships, routines, and what they have stopped doing because of the disease. "For years, we have approached heart failure from an almost exclusively biomedical perspective. But patients told us something else: that the hardest part was not only the physical symptoms, but also changing lifestyle habits and activities they had been doing for a long time, ceasing to participate in their social life, feeling lonely or a burden to others," explains Dr. Olano. 

SHARE is a randomized, controlled, multicenter essay conducted in outpatient heart failure units at OSI Donostialdea, Cruces University Hospital OSI Ezkerraldea Enkarterri Cruces, and Clínica Universidad de Navarra at its headquarters in Pamplona, in partnership Nursing, Cardiology, Psychology, and work departments. The intervention is based on the person-centered approach developed by The Gothenburg Center for Person-Centered Care in Sweden and adapted to the Spanish context. Through the internship healthcare coaching skills and personalized follow-up, nurses, who are specifically trained for this purpose, work alongside patients to identify which aspects of their lives have been most affected by the disease and what goals they wish to recover or improve. 

The study began in 2024 and plans to include 374 patients. Although the final results will be obtained when fill in sample fill in , preliminary analyses point to improvements in core topic variables core topic the use of healthcare resources, unscheduled visits, and the experience of living with the disease. In addition to its impact on patients, the project having a transformative effect on internship : "The nurses themselves tell us that this intervention has allowed them to 'go back to nursing': to establish deeper relationships with patients and better understand their reality," says Dr. Jesús Martín. 

The social impact of heart failure

In Spain, heart failure is one of the leading causes of hospitalization in people over 65 and affects more than 10% of the population aged 70 and over. Fatigue, shortness of breath, and edema force many patients to gradually give up everyday activities such as going for walks, meeting friends, traveling, or even maintaining their family and social roles. 

Various programs of study shown that this social isolation is not a minor side effect: it is associated with higher fees depression, poorer self-care, more hospital admissions, and an increased risk of mortality, comparable to that of classic factors such as smoking or hypertension. "If a person stops finding meaning in taking care of themselves because they have lost what motivated them—their family, their friends, their social life—the impact on their health is enormous," says Jesús Martín.