A systematic review of self-care measures for adolescents with health needs

New Self-Care Scale for Adults (SCS-A): Development and validation in Spanish parents and its relationship with psychological and family adjustment

PURPOSE

Although there are different instruments that evaluate self-care, most of them have not been validated for use in the Spanish population or in the general adult population. Moreover, there is little evidence on its relationship with psychological and family adjustment. Therefore, the aims of this study were to: (1) validate the self-care scale for adults and (2) analyse its external validity, verifying its relationship with general psychological and family adjustment variables.

METHODS

The sample was constituted by 971 parents (56.5% women) with children in early childhood (0-5 years) aged 23-58 years (M = 38.11). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, correlations and Student's t mean contrasts were carried out.

RESULTS

Good fit indices for the scale, which presented a bifactor structure composed of physical and psychological self-care. Both types of self-care were directly related to life satisfaction and positive affect; on the other hand, they were negatively related to parental stress, the presence of family-work conflict, and the guilt related to such conflict. The mothers reflected lower levels of psychological self-care.

CONCLUSIONS

The developed questionnaire is a valid instrument that can be useful in the measurement of self-care in adults and particularly in parents of young children. It is highlighted the need to design initiatives that improve parental well-being through the study construct.

Effects of Implementing a Self-Care Program for Adults With Lower Limb Prostheses

An artificial replacement for a lost limb or portion of a limb, known as a prosthesis, is a tool that can assist a person to regain their independence. The aim of this project was to evaluate the effect of a self-care program for adults with lower limb prostheses. We used a quasi-experimental research design. We conducted our study at the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Rheumatology Center affiliated with the Armed Forces, located in the Al-Geza Governorate of Egypt using a purposeful sample of 81 adults with lower limb prostheses. We used two tools for data collection: a structured interviewing questionnaire and the Trinity Amputation and Prosthesis Experience Scales (TAPES). The mean age of adults with lower limb prosthesis in our study was 38.91 years (10.53). A total of 64.2% of the study participants (n = 51) were men. We found that before the self-care program, 22.2% of the participants (n = 18) had a satisfactory level of knowledge about self-care, which increased to 88.9% (n = 72) after the program. Before the self-care program, the number of participants with adequate practice levels was 13.6% (n = 11), which increased to 100.0% (n = 81) after the program. We concluded that implementing the self-care program provided a significant improvement in the attendee's total satisfactory knowledge (χ2[79,81] = 72.90, p < .000) and adequate practice levels (p < .001).

Instruments Measuring Self-Care in Children and Young Adults With Chronic Conditions: A Systematic Review

Children and young adults (CYAs) with chronic conditions need to engage in self-care to improve their quality of life. This study aimed to retrieve the literature on instruments to assess self-care in CYAs living with chronic conditions and evaluate the psychometric proprieties of the instruments retrieved. A systematic literature review was conducted on six databases to identify peer-reviewed papers that described or used an evaluation instrument of self-care in CYAs with chronic conditions. Twenty-three articles describing 11 instruments of self-care were identified. Five instruments (45.45%) were developed for specific diseases, while six (54.54%) for various chronic illnesses. Most of the instruments were focused on treatment adherence within self-care maintenance (i.e., behaviors to maintain illness stability), excluding the monitoring of clinical parameters or the management of exacerbations. This review provides an overview of available instruments that measure self-care in CYAs with chronic conditions, which health professionals could use for patient education.

Health Measurement Model-Bringing a Life Course Perspective to Health Measurement: The PRISM Model

Health is a multidimensional concept that is challenging to measure, and in the rapidly evolving developmental changes that occur during the first 21 years of human life, requires a dynamic approach to accurately capture the transitions, and overall arc of a complex process of internal and external interactions. We propose an approach that integrates a lifecourse framework with a layered series of assessments, each layer using a many to many mapping, to converge on four fundamental dimensions of health measurement-Potential, Adaptability, Performance, and Experience. The four dimensions can conceptually be mapped onto a plane with each edge of the resulting quadrilateral corresponding to one dimension and each dimensions assessment calibrated against a theoretical ideal. As the plane evolves over time, the sequential measurements will form a volume. We term such a model the Prism Model, and describe conceptually how single domain assessments can be built up to generate the holistic description through the vehicle of a layer of Exemplar Cases. The model is theoretical but future work can use the framework and principles to generate scalable and adaptable applications that can unify and improve the precision of serial measurements that integrate environmental and physiologic influences to improve the science of child health measurement.