| Summary: | 碩士 === 長榮大學 === 醫務管理學系碩士班 === 98 === Purpose：To understand the knowledge of symptom management and the associated factors among older adults in Taiwan.
Methods：This study used the『Survey of the Health and Living Status of the Middle-Aged and the Elderly in Taiwan" in 2003』 which was constructed by Bureau of Health Promotion, Department of Health. Respondents who completed this survey by themselves were analyzed and it contained 5116 older adults. Knowledge of symptom management included preventive behavior, disease cognition and knowledge of disease care and attitudes about common chronic diseases.
Result：There were 69.6% cases being poor performance about knowledge of disease, 51.9% about prevention of disease and 42.4% about self care knowledge. Our results showed that after controlling for demographic characteristics, health status and medical utilization, the factors associated with poor symptom management were being male (OR=1.77 , 95%CI=1.53-2.05), over 65 years old (OR=1.02 , 95%CI=1.01-1.03), aboriginal (OR=2.02 , 95%CI=1.19-3.42), lived in rural area (OR=1.83 , 95%CI=1.56-2.13), uneducated(OR=7.04 , 95%CI=5.61-8.85), lower family income (OR=1.35 , 95%CI=1.06-1.70), with no spouse (OR=1.23 , 95%CI=1.03-1.47), poor perceived health (OR=1.33 , 95%CI=1.08-1.64), poor perceived health compared with last year (OR=1.20 , 95%CI=1.03-1.40), fewer chronic diseases (OR=1.24 , 95%CI=1.18-1.30), disabled (OR=1.21 , 95%CI=1.02-1.43), depressive tendency (OR=1.37 , 95%CI=1.13-1.65)and have not been hospitalization last year (OR=1.36 , 95%CI=1.12-1.64).
Conclusions and recommendations：Our result found out that if elder had lower socioeconomic status and poor health status, they would be the high risk population of poor knowledge of symptom management..With the rising aging population, we suggest that public health agencies should pay more attention about this group and process health education or integration to raise the knowledge of disease.
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