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To describe and compare generic and disease-specific self-care measures in patients with multiple chronic conditions (MCCs) in the three dimensions of self-care maintenance, monitoring, and management.
Multicentre cross-sectional study.
Patients aged 65 and over with MCCs. We used Self-Care of Chronic Illness Inventory to measure generic self-care, Self-care of Diabetes Inventory to measure self-care in diabetes mellitus, Self-Care of Heart Failure (HF) Index to measure self-care in HF, and Self-Care of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Inventory to measure self-care in chronic lung diseases.
We recruited 896 patients. Multimorbid patients with diabetes had lower scores on the self-care maintenance scale, and diabetic patients in insulin treatment on the generic management scale than on the disease-specific instrument. Multimorbid patients with HF or chronic lung diseases scored higher on generic self-care maintenance and monitoring scales than disease-specific ones. There was a partial consistency between the generic and disease-specific self-care maintenance and management. Inadequate behaviours were recorded in disease-specific self-care monitoring rather than generic ones.
Older patients affected by MCCs scored differently in the generic and disease-specific instruments, showing inadequate self-care in some of the three self-care dimensions.
The choice between generic and disease-specific instruments to use in clinical practice and research should be made considering the specific aims, settings, patients characteristics, and knowledge of the different performance of the instruments by users.
No study has described and compared generic and specific self-care measures in patients affected by MCCs. Knowing these differences can help nurses choose the most suitable measure for their aims, context, and patients and plan generic and disease-specific self-care educational interventions for those behaviours in which MCCs patients perform poorly.
Patients were informed about the study, provided informed consent, and answered questionnaires through interviews.
Describe and compare generic and disease-specific caregiver contribution (CC) to self-care behaviours in the dimensions of self-care maintenance, self-care monitoring and self-care management in multiple chronic conditions (MCCs).
Multicentre cross-sectional study.
We enrolled caregivers of patients with MCC, from April 2017 to November 2022, if they were (a) 18 years of age or older and (b) identified by the patient as the principal unpaid informal caregiver. The Caregiver Contribution to Self-Care of Chronic Illness Inventory, Caregiver Contribution to Self-Care of Heart Failure Index, Caregiver Contribution to Self-Care of COPD Inventory and Caregiver Contribution to Self-care of Diabetes Inventory were used to measure generic and disease-specific contribution to patient self-care. Descriptive statistics, Student's t-tests and Pearson's correlation coefficients were used.
We found adequate generic CC for self-care monitoring but inadequate CC in self-care maintenance and management. All CC to disease-specific self-care maintenance, monitoring and management scales' scores were inadequate, except for caregivers of diabetic patients in which we observed an adequate score in the CC to self-care maintenance and self-care management scales in those practice insulin therapy.
Caregivers experience difficulties in performing behaviours of contribution to their patients affected by chronic conditions. Caregivers of patients with MCCs contribute more to self-care in aspects related to provider prescriptions and less to lifestyle changes.
Healthcare professionals have to know in which behaviours caregivers show gaps and reflect on the reasons for poor CC to self-care to develop interventions to enhance these behaviours.
This study underlines the importance of choosing the most appropriate instrument for measuring CC to self-care, considering the caregiver's characteristics.
We adhered to STROBE guidelines.
Caregivers of patients affected by MCCs were enrolled.
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