A Nurse-led Structured Risk Factor Management Programme to Improve Quality of Life for Patients With Atrial Fibrillation

AF is the most common heart rhythm disorder. It increase the risk of stroke, heart failure, and death. Its symptoms, including palpitation, fatigue, and breathlessness, often limit daily activities and reduce quality of life, even in patients receiving treatment to control heart rhythm or rate. in the proposed nurse-led program, the cardiac nurse will teach AF patients how to manage health habits that affect AF, including eating well, staying active, sleeping well, not smoking, drinking less alcohol, and taking medicines as prescribed. A nurse works with each person to set small, realistic goals.

The main questions it aims to answer are:

1. Does the programme improve health-related quality of life for AF patients? 2. Does the programme improve symptom burden for AF patients? 3. Does the programme improve the functional exercise capacity for AF patients? 4. Does the programme increase the reported self-efficacy level for participants? 5. Does the programme improve the health behaviours, physiological risk parameters and cardiovascular health score for participants?

Researcher will compare interventional group (80 AF participants joining the 12-week program in addition to usual care) to a control group (80 AF participants receive usual care only) to see if the program works to improve the quality of life, symptom burden and overall cardiovascular health than usual care alone among AF patients.

Participants in the intervention group will:

1. Receive a 1-hour face-to-face individual session with nurse for structured AF self-management education and personalized behavioural change planning in week 1 2. Keep track of their own health behaviours using a self-management booklet 3. Get 6 bi-weekly telephone follow-up calls from the nurse to review progress and support staged behavioural change 4. Receive weekly tailored text messages with reminders and encouragement

The study will take place at three hospitals in Hong Kong and will enrol about 160 adults. Each person will take part for about 5 months. Researchers will evaluate outcome (quality of life, AF symptom severity, functional exercise capacity, self-efficacy, health behaviours, body mass index, blood pressure, blood cholesterol, blood sugar, Life Essential 8 score) at three timepoint: baseline, upon completion of the programme (12 week), and 8 weeks thereafter (20 week).