Study On Theoretical Model Of Self-Care Deficits Of Home-Dwelling Elderly In Shanghai

Objective: Shanghai has the highest percentage of aging population in China, and home care is themost important models for the aged. The elderly have self-care deficits due to various reasons, andneed different levels of care from others. This study aims to explore the components andinfluencing factors of self-care defects of the home dwelling elderly’s in Shanghai, to furtherprovide theory basis for nursing interventions regarding home care.Methods: The first phase of this study was carried out to explore components of self-care deficitsby interviewing home dwelling elderly. A purposive sampling strategy incorporated with theoreticalsampling and snowball sampling was used to recruit participants from6communities in Shanghai.A total of15elderly were interviewed.They were asked to tell their experiences regard toself-deficits, including their perceptions of self-deficits and how they acted to ensure theirself-deficits. All the interviews were recorded on digital recorders, and then transcribed into worddocuments. Nvivi8.0was used to analyse data. Important themes of experience of home dwellingelderly were extracted through open, axial and selective coding strategy guided by the groundedtheory.Based on the results of the first phase, the second phase employed a quantitative design toexamine the levels of self-care defects of home dwelling elderly and relevant influencing factors.In this phase, data was collected by a cross-sectional survey in Shanghai. Therefore, the instrumentfor the survey was developed including the General information scale, the Self Perceptions ofHealth Scale, the Life Habits, and the Health Quotient Scale. SPSS17.0was adopted to establishdatabase and analysis.Results：1. The conceptual model of self-care defects was initially developed with four dimensions:continuity of self-survival deficits, self-health recovery deficits, self-health maintenance deficitsand self-social development deficits, the factors of self-deficit were personal and environmentalfactors.2. The self-survival deficits score of home dwelling elderly in Shanghai was (8.73±1.72), theself-social development deficits deficits score was (7.34±2.74).3. Age, gender, health status, health/diseases knowledge, and social support were found to bestatistically significantly associated with self-survival deficits.4. Age, health status, health knowledge, and social support had statistically significantcorrelations with self-social development deficits. Conclusion: A theoretical framework for self-deficits of home dewelling elderly was developed,which would guide the development of strategies for home care.