Self-Care Activities of Patients Undergoing Maintenance Hemodialysis in Erbil Governorate

Abstract

Background 
 Self-Care activities of hemodialysis patients are very important on a daily base, which improve their health and prevent them from complications and illness. This practice was the best practice that used since Orem’s nursing theory until now to improve all sides of patients.
 Objectives 
 This study aims to assess the level of Self-Care activities and determines the association factors affecting their activity among hemodialysis patients.
 Materials and Methods
 This cross-sectional study involved 242 patients that maintain on the hemodialysis treatment in Erbil City from November 2019 to April 2020, by using interview questionnaires. Data were analyzed by SPSS Program version 23 involved descriptive statistics, including frequency, percentage, and chi-square tests.
 Results
 More than half of the participants (55.4%) were in the older adult age group, male (52.5%), illiterate (53.7%), and live in the urban area (54.5%). The majority of them were married (72.3%) and poor income (76%). Highly percentage were non- smokers (94.6%), 88.8% were with chronic diseases and hypertension (72.7%). 50.4% of them time duration of hemodialysis treatment was between 1 year to 4 years. Most of the participants (70.2%) sometimes they were done self-care activities. Dependency of self-care activities was significantly higher associated with all the variables of socioeconomic (P <0.001) except with sex, however, there was no significant association with all the variables of clinical data except with associated disease of Chronic Renal Failure, the existence of heart disease and with a duration of hemodialysis treatment. 
 Conclusion
 In general, hemodialysis patients sometimes can perform self-care activities. Dependency of self-care activities was highly significantly associated with the majority of socioeconomic variables and with the few parts of the clinical variable. Hemodialysis patients need their self-care activities for improving their health and well-being continually.

The relationship between Scio-demographic Characteristics and the Application of Self Care Instruction Program for Patients with Double Lumen Catheter

“…Finally, more than half and half of the study and comparison group were both in the low monthly income class (less than 300.000 IQD). This contrasts with the findings of previous research, which showed that more than half of hemodialysis patients had an adequate or middle-class income (13) (14) (15) (17) . Also result presented that there was a highly significant difference between the knowledge of the study group and the comparison group within the post-test level at (P = .000).…”

“…They received their information as percentages from nursing staff, social media, other patients, and medical staff (35, 20, 15, and 5%). In contrast, research showed that the majority of hemodialysis patients receive proper self-care knowledge, with physicians acting as the primary source of this information (17) .…”

“…Hemodialysis patients in the same geographic region of study have a high percentage of illiteracy or those who can read and write and have only a primary level of education (15) (16) (17) .…”