Background
We aimed to investigate the relationships between selected psychological features of patients with chronic systolic heart failure (HF) and their attitude towards knowledge of the disease.

Participants and procedure
This prospective study among 75 patients with stable systolic HF consisted of 2 parts: a quantitative approach, conducted during the hospitalization (based on 4 psychological questionnaires: the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale; the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations; the Acceptance of Illness Scale; and the Patient’s Request Form) and a qualitative approach (phone interviews performed later).

Results
Fifty-nine percent of patients declared the need for possessing knowledge about their disease. Psychological questionnaires did not allow us to characterize groups of patients with extremely different attitudes towards knowledge about the disease. Patients who did not want to look for any information, although they admitted that their knowledge was poor, were characterized by the conviction that nobody has an influence on their health status. Patients who were likely to read drug labels were characterized by the active style of coping.

Conclusions
The attitude towards knowledge about the disease is diverse among patients with systolic HF, and it is not easy to explain these differences using their psychological features assessed in the present study. Further studies focused on assessing the patient’s willingness to acquire knowledge about HF, using more accurate measures, are needed, especially for healthcare professionals, who still look for an improvement in understanding the needs of their patients.