Quality of Life, Perceived Health Status, Pain, and Difficulty of Activity of Daily Living of Degenerative Arthritis Patient in Island Residents / 農村醫學 地域保健

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to identify and relationships among quality of life, perceived health status, pain and difficulty of daily activity with degenerative arthritis living in island residents. METHODS: The participants were 601 degenerative arthritis patients. Data were collected using structured questionnaires from June 23th to Oct. 08th, 2008 and analyzed using the SPSS 12.0 program. and it included descriptive statistics, t-test, chi-square-test, Pearson correlation coefficient. RESULTS: The mean quality of life score was 115.87, perceived health status was 4.40, pain was 6.31 and difficulty of daily activity was 77.62. On the demographic variables, age, living arrangement, level of economics showed significant difference for the quality of life and sex and age showed significant difference for the perceived health status, pain, difficulty of daily activity. On the disease-related variables, duration of disease, use of analgesic drug showed significant difference for the dependent variables. There was a significant positive correlation among the quality of life, perceived health status, significant negative correlation pain and difficulty of daily activity. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggested that nursing intervention program including pain reduction, enhancing the perceived health status, ADL abilities and quality of life were necessary for the osteoarthritis patients in island residents