Factors affecting self-care among community-dwelling hypertensive older adults: A cross-sectional study.
Soo Youn Jung, Kyoung Ja Moon
PMID 36852519WHAT IT FOUND
In 105 older adults with hypertension, diet self-care was associated with religion and higher cognitive scores.
Health self-care was lower with comorbidities. The lowest health behaviour item was checking blood pressure at home.
Key findings
01Religious affiliation and higher MoCA-K cognitive scores were associated with better diet self-care behaviour.
02Having comorbidities was associated with lower health self-care behaviour.
03Home blood pressure checking was the lowest-scoring health behaviour item at 2.17 points, while not forgetting to fill prescriptions was highest at 3.90 points.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
This was a cross-sectional survey, so it cannot show that religion, cognition, or comorbidities caused better or worse self-care. Participants were 105 older adults attending one general hospital in a small city in South Korea, so results may not apply to other settings. Self-care behaviour was reported by participants on a questionnaire, not observed or measured from clinic records. The scale had lower reliability in this study than in prior work, and the regression models explained only 13% of diet behaviour and 22% of health behaviour. Many participants had cognitive impairment: 53.3% were in the mild cognitive impairment range on K-MMSE and 64.8% were in the mild cognitive impairment range on MoCA-K among those tested, and MoCA-K was not done for 6 participants with dementia. The study did not include subjective factors such as motivation, depression, self-efficacy, or empowerment.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as proof that assessing cognition or promoting religion will improve hypertension self-care. It was a single-time survey of 105 older adults at one hospital, so it shows associations, not effects of an intervention.