Skin self-management of community-dwelling patients with spinal cord injury: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

Backgroundcommunity-acquired pressure injury is one of the most common and troublesome complications of discharged patients with spinal cord injury. Previous studies have shown that pressure injury can not only increase the financial burden and care burden of patients, but also seriously affect their quality of life. AimTo evaluate the skin self-management of community-dwelling patients with spinal cord injury and to explore the related independent influencing factors. MethodsThis was a cross-sectional survey study. A convenience sample of 110 community-dwelling patients with spinal cord injury recruited from three rehabilitation centers in Guangzhou and Chengdu in China completed the survey from September 2020 to June 2021. They were asked about their demographic data, skin self-management, knowledge about skin self-management, attitude to skin self-management, self-efficacy, and functional independence. Univariate analysis and multiple linear regression were performed to isolate the most important relationships. ResultsThe skin self-management of community-dwelling patients with spinal cord injury was relatively low, and they also performed poorly in the three categories of: skin check, preventing pressure ulcer, and preventing wounds. Skin self-management was found to be most often associated with level of knowledge about skin self-management, higher reimbursement and self-efficacy. ConclusionCommunity-dwelling patients with spinal cord injury with lower level of knowledge about skin self-management, with lower self-efficacy, and those with higher reimbursement have worse skin self-management.