Self-care Status in Healthy Women Visiting Health Care Centers in Zahedan, Southeast Iran

Background: Self-care in health is a set of activities undertaken to promote and restore health, prevent disease, and limit illness. Objectives: This study assessed the self-care status of women in Zahedan, southeast Iran. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 15-60-year-old women in Zahedan. All the women were interviewed by an expert staff to obtain demographic data. In addition, they filled out a self-care assessment questionnaire that had 75 items in 5 dimensions, including physical health, mental and emotional well-being, management priorities, supportive relationships, and meaning. Results: A total of 250 women with a mean age of 40 ± 11.6 years completed the study. The total self-care score was 191.3 ± 44.9. About 64% of the women had an unfavorable self-care score, while only 6.4% and 30% had good and relatively good scores, respectively. There was a direct correlation between age, mental and spiritual well-being (r = 0.618, P 0.001), and meaning (r = 0.229, P 0.001), but an inverse correlation was found between age, physical health (r = - 0.413, P 0.001), and supportive relationship (r = - 0.204, P 0.001). The highest unfavorable self-care score was found among women with elementary education (77.2%), while the lowest was found among women with university education (39.5%) (P = 0.001). Conclusions: About two-thirds of women had an unfavorable self-care score, which shows poor self-care in women in Zahedan. Therefore, appropriate educational and training programs should be administered to increase women s knowledge and promote self-care behaviors.