Study on the Role of Perceived Benefits and Barriers in Self-Care Behaviors among Diabetic Patients

Treatment and illness management depends mostly on patient's performance in diseases and disorders such as diabetes. Therefore, self-care has an important role in the health of these patients; they can affect their own welfare, functional capabilities, and illness processes by achieving self-care skills. Today, self-care depends on individual, psychological and social factors, recognition of which can assist medical service providers in carrying out educational programs. This study was conducted to find the role of perceived benefits and barriers in self-care behaviors among diabetic patients. This is a narrative review in which information banks and search engines such as PubMed, SCOPUS, ProQuest, and Elsevier and key words like diabetes self-care, perceived benefits and barriers were used. Moreover, the articles including sectional, cohort, interventional, and qualifying and narrative review were chosen in this study. Persian studies were selected through informational banks, like IRANMEDEX, MEDLIB and also studies from domestic magazines. The findings of the reviewed articles show the intermediate influence of perceived benefits and barriers in diabetic patients’ self-care. The most considerable perceived benefits were qualified fasting blood control, the feeling of happiness and decreasing of expenses. The most significant perceived barriers of self-care consist of lacking family support, feeling of shame, forgetfulness and not being able to control their eating. Perceived benefits and barriers, as the central constructs of some model and behavior change theories, were related to self-care. There is a positive correlation between self-care and perceived benefits and a negative correlation between self-care and perceived barriers. Therefore, these two strategic constructs can be taken into consideration for promoting self-care behaviors among diabetic patients.