The Study of Self Care Ability and Its Effective Factors in Elderly Referring to Comprehensive Health Centers in Karaj -2019

Elderly is a critical period of human life increasing the amount of selfcare in health can reduce the burden of disease. The purpose of this study was to determine self-care ability and its effective factors in elderly referring to comprehensive health centers in Karaj in 1397.

This is a cross- sectional descriptive analytical study that was performed on 410 elderly people over 60 years who referred to comprehensive health services by multistage random sampling method. A standard questionnaire self-care ability and demographic profile form were used. Data was entered into SPSS version 20 and were analyzed be descriptive and analytic tests.

The mean age of the subjects was (66.86±6.48). The mean score of total self-care ability was (139.03±13.08) and above the standard average. In this study, the underlying variables of physical status, sex, education, occupation, income, place of living and income were significantly correlated with self-care ability dimensions (p<0.005). Geographic area of life, number of children and family size as well as age groups had no significant relationship with the dimensions of self-care ability.

The majority of subjects had good self-care ability. It seems that the educational intervention can improve the self-care ability of the elderly.