Aim. The aim of this study was to determine the family members’ performance in confront with

patient's heart attack and its relationship with their knowledge in this filed.

Background. Heart attack is one of the most common, serious and fatal diseases. It is growing

rapidly worldwide and is the most leading cause of mortality. The performance of people who

deal with the heart attack patients in the early minutes, is important in prognosis of disease and

his/her life and death .

Method. This correlational descriptive study was conducted on 300 family members of

patients with heart attacks who hospitalized in teaching hospitals of Iran University of Medical

Sciences. Data were collected by a questionnaire and continuous sampling. Validity of

questionnaire was confirmed by content validity and its reliability were confirmed by test-retest

and by internal consistency ( 0.92).

Findings. The findings showed that there was good level of knowledge, but poor performance

of the subjects in confront with patient's heart attack. There was statisticaly significant

correlations between performance and the knowledge (p=0.004), but no significant correlations

between performance and the knowledge with level of education, age and gender.

Conclusion. Despite of good level of knowledge in target community, none of them have good

performance in the confront with heart attack patients therefore it is recommended to educate

the public on how to deal with heart attack patients and to perform more studies in this field

in order to offer appropriate strategies to promote the knowledge and performance of family

members and individuals in society.