Self-care behavior and its related factors in the community-dwelling elderlies in Sari, 2014

With increasing age in old era, happen changes in dimensions including physical weakness, reduce brain power and psychopathy in elderilies. So under the effect of such factors some actions must be done for elderlies. One of the best actions is self-care. The aim of this study was to determine the level of self-care behaviors and its related factors in community dwelling elderlies in Sari, 2014. This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2014 on 120 elderlies in Sari city. Multi-stage randomized sampling metod was done from 10 health centers. Data collection was done with self-care questionnare (standard by Ministry of Health). Reliability of this questionnaire calculated 0/83 with Cronbach's alpha test on 30 elderlies. Data analyzed by SPSS.v.16 software with using descriptive statistics(such as mean, abundance and median) and inferential statistics (such as t-test, Spearman and Pearson correlation and chi-square tests). From 120 elderlies 50% were man that the most of them were married (64.5%), with average economic status (56.7%) and illiterate (60 persons). The mean and standard deviation of total self-care and physical, mental, emotional and spiritual dimensions were 128.42±11.98, 39.10 ± 4.22,18.15 ± 3.07, 34.75 ± 4.35 and 36.40 ± 5.16 respectively. There is a significant relationship among psychological self-care with education level (p=0.001) and lifestyle of elderlies (p=0.026). Also there is a significant and meaningful relationship among spiritual self-care with educational level of elderlies (p=0.001) and lifestyle of them (p=0.003). According to results of this study, the most level of elderlies self-care was good and demographic factors such as level of education, economic efficiency and life style were effective on self-care. based on the possible effects of education and economic efficiency on aspects of self-care, recommended provided some actions to improve quality of life and education of this peoples.