A Study on Factors Associated with Quality of Life Among Patients with Visual Impairment: An Example from a Teaching Hospital in Central Taiwan

• Main Authors: Heng-Chien Hsia, 夏恆健
• Other Authors: Duan-Rung Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/545gp2

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 醫療機構管理研究所 === 97 === The purposes of this study were to explore the quality of life (QOL) and its related factors among patients with visual impairment. Purposive sampling was used to collect data from 121 outpatients came from the ophthalmology department of a teaching hospital in central Taiwan. The structured questionnaires applied in this study contained demographic data, clinical characteristics, social support scale and WHOQOL-BREF Taiwan version. Our analysis focused on the 115 patients with lower education level because there were few patients with higher education in the collected sample. The results of this study reveal that the mean score of QOL among visual impaired patients was 9.12 in physical domain, 10.21 in psychological domain, 12.58 in social domain and 11.05 in environmental domain. Among the demographic characteristics, job and income are significantly associated with their physical, psychological and environmental QOL. Among the clinical characteristics, the degree and duration of visual impairment are significantly associated with their physical, psychological and environmental QOL, the age of visual impairment onset is significantly associated with their physical and environmental QOL, and the general health condition is significantly associated with their physical, psychological and social QOL. Among the socially supportive behaviors, emotional and instrumental support is significantly associated with their psychological and social QOL, and appraisal support is significantly associated with their social QOL. According to the stepwise multiple regression models, the best predicting factors are job and general health condition in physical domain; job, general health condition and emotional support in psychological domain; appraisal support in social domain; job, degree of impairment and duration of impairment in environmental domain. We suggest that medical staff should pay attention to the psychological aspect of the visual impaired patients, not only to the physical conditions. We also suggest that health administrators should help the visual impaired patients to overcome obstacles in education and employment, and provide them information and allowance to get caregivers.