Abstract:

Background: Care dependency is a dynamic process, which is directly affected by the status of the disease or disability of the individual. Objectives: This is a definitive and cross-sectional study realized with the objective of determining the levels of care dependency of the patients and the factors that affect the levels of care dependency. Methods: The setting of the study is composed of the patients who were admitted to the Internal Medicine and Surgical clinics of a State Hospital having a 156-bed capacity located in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus between July and September 2014. Whereas, of the patients who constituted the setting, 145 patients accepted to participate in the study and were taken into the sampling. The “Patient Information Form” and the “Care-Dependent Scale” were used as the data collection tools in the study. The data were evaluated by being coded in the SPSS 15 package program. The data obtained were evaluated with the Mann-Whitney U Test and the Kruskal-Wallis H Test. Results: Of the patients, 40.6% were between 61 and 80 years of age, 34.4% were primary school graduates and 61.4% were males. Of the patients, 71% were admitted to the emergency service at the hospital. Of those who participated in the study, 55.8% were treated in the internal medicine clinic and 44.2% were treated in the surgical clinic. It was found that the level of dependency was high for the patients whose level of education was low (p = .022), the patients who were admitted to the surgical clinic ( p= .001), the patients who applied to the emergency service (p = .037) and the patients who had operations (p = .002). Conclusion: In conclusion, it was determined in this study that the dependency levels of the patients admitted to the surgical clinic were higher compared to the patients admitted to the internal medicine clinic. According to these conclusions, it is proposed that when planning the nursing needs of the clinics that the levels of care dependency of the patients admitted to the clinics should be taken into consideration

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