ABSTRACT
Despite the effectiveness of self-care promotion strategy on patients’ health outcome, little is known about strategy adopted by nurses and factors influencing nursing practice behavior. The purpose of this study was to determine the contribution of sociodemographic variables, attitude toward patient self-care, and knowledge on self-care promotion strategy to nurses’ behavior in promoting patient self-care. A cluster random sampling was used to recruit samples from four major hospitals in metropolitan area. Data were collected by using self-report questionnaire with responses from 351 nurses. The finding demonstrated that the appropriateness of nurses’ behavior in promoting patient self-care was fair. Stepwise multiple regression analysis showed that nurses’ perception of hospital policy and nursing departments were the predictor of nurse’ behavior in promoting patient self-care. Only 53.8% of nurses had congruent with the actual hospital policy. Learning experience in self-care promotion also significantly correlated with perception of hospital policy. Nurses who learned self-care promotion from undergraduate school or postgraduate short course training program did not have significantly different attitude and knowledge about self-care from those who did not have such learning experience. The effect of self-care education on nurse behavior was seen only in the group that received short-course training. The results suggest that hospital policy needs to be reevaluated foe its clarification and operating function and method of teaching self-care promotion for nurses must be emphasized on experiential learning model rather than traditional model.