The Status of Self-Care Behaviors in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes in the City of Ilam in 2014

Successful control of diabetes is mainly dependent on patients’ self-care behaviors. This study aimed to investigate the self-care behaviors in type 2 diabetic patients in the city of Ilam.
In this crosssectional study in 2014¡ 70 patients with type 2 diabetes were selected randomly by stage sampling. The instruments used in this study included a demographic questionnaire and a summary of diabetes self-care activities checklist. Data were analyzed using the SPSS-20software. To assess the correlation between the independent variables and the self-care status¡ one-way ANOVA and independent t-test were used.
Findings: The samples of this study were respectively at moderate (74.3%) and poor (21.4%) levels of self-care. The total mean score of the self-care was 31.44 with a standard deviation of 8.89.The percentage score of self-care was 44.9% which represents self-care behaviors lower than the moderate level. The highest amount of self-care was done by the samples in terms of smoking (97.1%) and regular oral medication use and insulin (77.9%)¡ and the lowest level of self-care was performed in the dimension of blood glucose selfmonitoring at home (18.3%). In this study¡ there was a significant difference between education and self-care scores; so that with increased education¡ self-care scores increased¡ but there was no significant difference between gender¡ marital status¡ occupation as well as the type of treatment and the self-care scores.
Discussion & Considering that most diabetic patients in this study are at moderate and poor levels in terms of selfcare behaviors¡ there is a need to develop and support programs with educational contents and to do regular self-care followups among diabetic patients.