The Journal of

Introduction: Patients with diabetes may have weakness in performing appropriate self-care behaviors and adherence to it. Therefore, the first step to the improvement of self-care behaviors is to identify the influential barriers to the self-care behaviors. This study aimed to determine the barriers of self-care behaviors in type 2 diabetic patients of Yazd province.

Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional correlation study which was accomplished on 152 patients with type 2 diabetes who referred to Yazd Diabetes Research Center of Yazd by systematic sampling. The data were collected by a Self-made questionnaire. The validity and reliability of the questionnaire were assessed by the means of Cronbach's alpha at 0.8. The data were analyzed using SPSS version 16 and the Independent Samples t -test, ANOVA and Pearson correlation coefficient were applied.

Results: The scores of the barriers to the self-care behaviors of diabetic patients was 52/03 from 100 which was at the level of moderate. The results suggest that the economic barriers were the most substantial factors among the self-care barriers (73 points), and the knowledge and attitude (63 points) were in the second row. The Effective barriers to the self-care behaviors based on age, sex, education, occupational status, income level, the duration of disease, having diabetic complications and the number of their referrals to the physicians were significantly different. 

Conclusion: Identifying the barriers to self-care behaviors is an important step in helping diabetic patients especially economically. Therefore, procedures such as monitoring of the blood glucose level for diabetic patients, providing supportive service and delivering self-monitoring and self-caring tools and equipments, self-monitoring will improve self-caring behaviors.