Adherence of Older People with Diabetes to Self-Care Activities: a Study on Gender Differences
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Diabetes mellitus is one of the main diseases affecting the elderly population, and the evaluation of adherence to the elderly self-care practices in diabetes is essential to reduce the occurrence of events considered preventable. The aim of this study was to evaluate the self-care activities for elderly people with diabetes mellitus and check the gender differences in adherence to these activities.
METHODS: Descriptive study conducted with 50 elderlies of both genders, assisted by a Family Health Unit in a city of Paraíba within November 2013 to January 2014. The data collection used the Diabetes Questionnaire of Self -Care Activities, adapted and validated for the Brazilian context from the Summary of Diabetes Self-Care Activities Questionnaire.
RESULTS: The elderly population studied showed satisfactory adherence to self-care activities proposed by the instrument. There were no statistically significant differences between men and women in mean adherence to the activities of self-care with diabetes. Older women had higher scores for the dimensions “general and specific food” and “medication” and a lower score for the dimension “monitoring of blood glucose.” Men showed a greater adherence to the dimension “foot care” and lower adherence to the item “sweet ingested.”
CONCLUSION: The evaluated elderly have desirable self-care on the appropriate and important activities for the control of diabetes.
Keywords

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access and Benefits of Publishing Open Access).