Abstract:
Coronary heart disease (CHD) remains the leading cause of mortolity in the elderly and is associated with the aging process. Additional risk factors include hyperlipidemia hypertension diabetes mellitus obesity cigreette-use type-A behavior etc. This disease has an immense impact on quality of life in the elderly. An understanding of factors affecting a sense of coherence (SOC) among CHD elderly is essential for promoting the development of effective care in nursing The purpose of this survey research was to study the relationship between demongraphic variables (sex, age and marital status) , socioeconomic variables (education and income), knowledge, social support, hope, and SOC and the investigation of the cooperative prediction of SOC from independent variables. The sample consisted of 180 CHD elderly attending the Cardiovascular Chinic Out Patient Department of gevernment hospitals in Bangkok. Data were gathered by interviews and were analyzed by stepwise multiple regression.The results indicated that hope, income, sex, and marital status were significantly factors that could cooperatively predict the SOC among the CHD elderly at 47 percent and hope is the most influential to the SOC. The standardized equation showed that hope , income and sex(male) were positively correlated with SOC and marital status (divorce and separate) was negatively correlated with SOC.