The Effectiveness of Self-Care Training on Quality of Life, Self-Care Behaviors and Blood Sugar in Elderly Lacking Self-Care Behaviors

Elderly with no self-care behaviors suffer from many physical and psychological problems and self-care training can help them. Therefore, present research aimed to determine the effectiveness of self-care training on quality of life, self-care behaviors and blood sugar in elderly lacking self-care behaviors. This was a quasi-experimental study with pretest-posttest design and control group. The research population included diabetic elderly men who had records in health care centers of Mashhad city, 2019 year. Reviewing inclusion criteria, 54 samples were selected through objective sampling method and were randomly divided to two groups. Experimental group were trained on self-care training by Mahdi and et al. in 6 sessions of 60-minutes; however, the control group didn’t receive training. Data were collected using LEIPAD elderly quality of life questionnaire, Toobert et al. revised scale for self-care behaviors among elderly and blood sugar tests, which were analyzed by univariate analysis of covariance in SPSS version 19. The results showed no significant difference in terms of quality of life, self-care behaviors and blood sugar in experiment and control groups pretests (P>0/05); though, in posttests, there were significant differences in terms of all three variables (P<0/05). In other words, self-care training led to an increase in quality of life and self-care behaviors while decreased blood sugar in elderly (P<0/05). According to the results, it was recommended that health professionals and therapists use self-care training method along with other training and therapeutic methods to improve quality of life and self-care and reduce blood sugar especially in elderly with no self-care behaviors.