The Health Belief Model and Self-Care Behaviors among Type 2 Diabetic Patients

Diabetes mellitus is a major health problem worldwide. The diabetes self-care behavior is an effective strategy to control diabetes. The study aimed to investigate the predictors of self-care behavior based on the Health Belief Model (HBM) among type 2 diabetic patients. This cross-sectional study was carried out on 390 diabetic patients referred to Hamadan Diabetes Research Center with a simple random sampling method. The participants completed a self-administered questionnaire including demographic characteristics, self-care behaviors and HBM constructs. Data were analyzed using parametric tests in SPSS-19 software. According to the findings, the diabetic patients had a moderate level of self-care behaviors. Also results showed that, HBM explained 29.6% of the variance in frequency of self-care behaviors. Perceived self-efficacy, perceived severity, perceived barrier and perceived susceptibility were the best significant predictors (P<0.05). The researchers suggest to promote self-care behaviors, preparing training packages tailored to the needs of diabetic patients with emphasis on increasing self-efficacy and removal barriers of normal self-care behaviors are necessary.