Guidelines to facilitate self-care among older persons in South Africa
Abstract
Background: The number of older persons is growing at an alarming rate, yet the South African healthcare sector is not giving this issue the required attention. Moreover, the healthcare sector serves four-fifths of the country's population and primary healthcare (PHC) facilities are overcrowded, and thus professional nurses are prevented from providing sufficient self-care health education to older persons.
Aim: To develop guidelines for the three role players e the public health sector, professional nurse and older person e to facilitate self-care among older persons in South Africa.
Design: Quantitative, descriptive, explorative and contextual research design.
Methods: A literature review followed by a self-care assessment of a sample of older persons using the Appraisal of Self-care Agency (ASA-A) and Exercise of Self care Agency (ESCA) questionnaires which led to the identification of conclusions and self-care deficits.
Results: Based on Menon's psychological health empowerment model, and from the conclusions and self-care deficits, nine self-care guidelines were developed for the public health sector, professional nurses and older persons.
Conclusion: This is the first systematic development of guidelines to facilitate self-care among older persons in South Africa. Implications for practice: The implementation of the self-care guidelines by the public health sector, professional nurses and older persons will improve the healthcare of older persons at home which will in turn improve their quality of life, reduce unintentional self-neglect, as well as assist in alleviating overcrowding in clinics because unnecessary visits to the clinic will drop.
Keywords: Older person, Self-care guidelines
The author(s) retain copyright on work published by AOSIS unless specified otherwise.
Licensing and publication rights
Author(s) of work published by AOSIS are required to grant AOSIS the unlimited rights to publish the definitive work in any format, language and medium, for any lawful purpose. AOSIS requires journal authors to publish their work in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the published article(s), provided attribution is given to the applicable journal with details of the original publication, as set out in the official citation of the article published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the article on the authors’ or their institution’s websites or in institutional repositories.
Previously published work may have been published under a different licence. We advise the community that if they would like to reuse the work to consult the applicable licence at article level.
Note: If you need to comply with your funding body policy, you can apply for the CC BY license after your manuscript is accepted for publication.
