Purpose: The purpose of this review was to identify the current status of nursing studies on heart failure (HF) patients in South Korea
and to suggest future study direction. Methods: A literature review of databases such as KoreaMed, KERIS and nursing and allied
health journal were searched with key terms ‘heart failure’ and ‘nursing’ for the period from January 2000 to February 2017. A total of
35 studies including 28 articles and 7 theses met the inclusion criteria. Results: Twenty-seven out of 35 studies were observational
studies on outpatients and most of the studies did not mention the ejection fraction and New York Heart Association functional classification
class (NYHA class) in the inclusion criteria. Self-care and health-related quality of life as psychological factors, and physical activity
as a biological factor, were used as main variables. However, we found it difficult to understand how much score indicates better
quality of life because of an inconsistent and wide score. In quality assessment, 8 intervention studies had no serious flaws. Conclusion:
Further studies should consider more biological and social factors influencing HF. The quality assessment with respect to nursing
intervention studies in HF showed that randomized and double-blind trials are needed.