The objectives of this study were to characterize the health status, the requirement of home nursing care, and dependency of daily life of the elderly so that the result could be used to provide basic data necessary for establishing home nursing care practices. The study subjects were 249 elders over 65 years old who resided at home in low income areas of three districts in Pusan. The field survey was conducted from December 27, 1993 through January 27, 1994, with a structured questionnaire. Statistical analysis was done by X2?test and Student’s T?test using SPSS/PC+ program.
The result were as follows;
1. Alcohol drinking rate was 50.0% for men and 27.7% for women, and cigarette smoking rate was 77.8% for men and 27.1% for women. 92.9% of elders aged 65?75 exercised regularly as compared to 81.9% of elders aged 75 and over(p<0.05).
2. 63.9% of male and 85.9% of female elders had chronic diseases showing singnificant differences(p<0.01), and both sexes had 1.7 kinds of chronic diseases in average; musculoskeletal diseases were the most common in 25.7%, while 6.8% of the elderly had cardiovascular diseases.
3. Partially movable elderly was 6.9% for men and 6.8% for woman, showing 47.1% of causes being cerebrovascular accidents.
4. The home nursing requirement was the highest for medication(66.3%), intramuscular injection(53.8%), and measurement of blood pressure?body.temperature.pulse rate(47.0%).
5. Among Physical Activities of Daily Life, bathing(10.4%) and movement(4.0%) showed high dependency rates, and among Instrumental Activities of Daily Life, phone calling(25.3%), shopping(24.5%), going out by bus(22.5%) showed high dependency rates.
6. For five categories of home nursing showing high requirements such as physical health examination, blood pressure· temperature. pulas rate measurements, medication, and intravascular injection, the requirements were different by age groups, education, and marital status(p<0.05).
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