Acceso usuarios
Nathaly Berrío García, Shirley Viviana Cataño Pulgarín, Andrés Gómez Acosta, Carlos J. Escobar Vargas
El autocuidado implica todas aquellas actividades que los individuos realizan en su propio beneficio, para la conservación de la vida, la salud y el bienestar. El objetivo de la presente revisión fue sintetizar los resultados de la investigación sobre la asociación de las condiciones individuales (aspectos sociodemográficos y psicológicos) con la agencia de autocuidado de la salud en adultos. Se hizo una búsqueda en bases de datos especializadas en ciencias de la salud y psicología (APA PsycNET, MEDLINE, Lilacs y SciELO), y una indagación manual de literatura gris. Se compilaron 13 estudios que cumplieron las condiciones de calidad metodológica. Los resultados sugieren perspectivas diferentes sobre el autocuidado en Latinoamérica, Oriente Medio, Norteamérica, Europa, Asia y Oceanía. Se concluye que se debe continuar investigando sobre la agencia de autocuidado y que son necesarios otros estudios con mayores niveles de evidencia. Se presentaron limitaciones en relación con la obtención incompleta de los estudios identificados.
Self-care, as a strategy, accounts for the activities that individuals carry out for their own benefit, for the preservation of life, health, and well-being. In terms of health, it is all that you do to promote it and prevent a disease. The objective of this review was to synthesize research´s results about the association of individual conditions (sociodemographic and psychological aspects) with self-care agency in adults’ health.
A preliminary search was made in systematic review databases. It was found reviews-oriented to strategies for the promotion and strengthening of self-care in people with health diagnoses, the reviews with the study variables were absent, so this justifies the need for this study. The study sources were specialized databases in health sciences and psychology (APA PsycNET, MEDLINE, Lilacs and SciELO), and manual inquiry of gray literature. In the first review, 162 studies were selected. The second review that evaluated the inclusion criteria led to the exclusion of 99. The remaining 63 underwent a methodological quality review, compiling 13 studies that met the quality conditions. The results show that twelve of them carried out prevalence analysis. In terms of population, five studied older adults, three university students, three adults in general, and two with professionals, and sample sizes ranged from 142 to 2 552 participants, with an average of 612 individuals per study. Regarding the self-care variable, polysemy was identified in its use and compound construction, such as: self-care agency, perception of self-care, self-care in health, self-care practice, level of self-care; however, the recurring theoretical referent was the theory of Orem (1993). On the other hand, different perspectives on self-care were identified in Latin America, the Middle East, North America, Europe, Asia and Oceania. In the first, the studies found sociodemographic differences in levels of self-care: in some, gender determined self-care agency; others, age was decisive and, in a few, behavioral factors in the face of non-use of health services determined low agency.
Research from the Middle East found a statistically significant relationship between self-care ability scores and sociodemographic and clinical characteristics, such as age groups, income, and medication use. There are findings that relate psychological factors – such as increased of self-esteem – with self-care; also, age had a significant relationship: older age less self-care and psychological factors: more self-care affects positively the increase of self-esteem. That last relationship was also identified in studies carried out in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia; however, the relationship changes in Japan: greater age greater self-care. On the other hand, it is relevant that this review is the first in Spanish that associates the self-care agency with individual variables in healthy people, especially when the statistics on publications indicate figures of 5 000 documents per day and only 11 % in Spanish and 3 % are with healthy population. It is concluded that research on self-care agency should continue, and that studies with higher levels of evidence are necessary. There are external and internal limitations: the first ones are related to the limited access to four of the identified studies due to there were unavailable to pay and the language barrier (by the research team) for one of them. The second ones are related to the impossibility of measurement due to the internal structure of the studies, that is, the measurement conditions and inclusion of predictor variables from different origins.
