Self-Care Capacity and Its Relationship to Age, Disability, and Perceived Well-Being in Medicare Beneficiaries.
Emily J Hauenstein, Adam Davey, Rachael S Clark and 3 others
PMID 34534184WHAT IT FOUND
Medicare beneficiaries with worse daily self-care, limited social activity, or depressive symptoms were more likely to see their health as poor or worry about it.
Clinicians can ask about these when patients report poor health or worry.
Key findings
01ADL and IADL limitations were associated with poorer perceived health compared with no limitations.
02Depressive symptoms and limited social activity were associated with poorer perceived health and more worry about health.
03Participants who delayed or omitted needed health care were less likely to report poor health or worry about health.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
This was a secondary analysis of merged survey data, and some concepts were not fully captured by the available variables. Self-care agency was measured only by depressive symptoms, not by intentional self-care behavior. The final analysis used 7,419 cases after exclusions for missing data and variable transformation from an initial analytic set of 14,280. Age and other variables were unevenly distributed across Medicare eligibility groups. The complex survey design limited resolution for some predictors and interaction terms. Some predictor combinations yielded very small sample sizes, which can make estimation difficult.
Declared interests
The authors report no conflict of interest. The study was funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these associations as proof that improving self-care, health literacy, vaccination, or care-seeking will improve perceived health. This was a survey data analysis, not a treatment trial, and some associations ran opposite to expectation, such as more health literacy linked to more worry and delayed care linked to less worry.