Abstract:
Coronary heart disease is one of the most important causes of mortality among Thai people. A large number of coronary heart disease patients in Chonburi province have been found increasingly. The great problem of the coronary heart disease patients is cardiac sudden death. If patients are able to care themself, problems can be prevented. Thus, the purpose of this research was to study the self-care deficit in coronary heart disease patients and to examine the relationships among sex, age, marital status, educational level, family income, the course of disease, the functional class of heart ability, the percieved health status, the behavioral patterns and self-care deficit in coronary heart disease patients. The sample was composed of 170 coronary heart disease patients who followed up at heart clinic, out patient department at Chonburi Hospital. The data was collected by using the structured questionaires including, i.e. the demographic data questionaire, the personal type scale and the self-care deficit of coronary heart disease patients scale. Statistical techniques were inplemented in the process of data analysis including percentage, arithmatic means, standard deviation, Pearson's product moment correlation coeficient and the stepwise multiple regression. The results were as follows: 1. The mean self-care defict of this sample was 17.38 (SD=7.0). Most of patients (87%) did not avoid high carbohydrate and cholesterol in take and did not discuss the self-care knowledge with the other patients (74.1%). Moreover, they were more likely stay at the smoking area (64.1%) and did not check pulse or observed abnormal symptoms while doing exercise (64.1%) 2. The variables were linearly related with self-care deficit in coronary heart disease patients which were percieved health status (PH) and sex (S) could be the predictors of the self-care deficit with statistical significance (p=.001) which could predict up to 8.6 percent(R2= 0.09, R =0.29) The equation was B = 22.20 -0.83(PH) -2.19 (S).