Impact of cultural factors on the elderly utilization from healthcare services provided by Isfahan University of Medical Sciences’ Hospitals - 2014

Aim: As we know, due to the undesirable structural and functional changes arise from aging, old people need more healthcare services than other groups in society. Many factors affect utilization of health services in this age group. Cultural factors can be named as the most important since they play a basic role in determining people’s lifestyle and ultimately in the health protection behaviors. Therefore, this paper is aimed at investigation of cultural factors, affecting old people benefit of healthservices in Isfahan province in 2014. Methods: This study was descriptive analytic, conducted in later 2014. The research population consisted of people aged over 60 years who had been admittedin 12 hospitals affiliated to Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. Two hundred seventy-five people were selected and entered into the research using random sampling method. Data gathering toolwas a researcher-made questionnaire in three scopes, and finally the data analyzed at two levels of descriptive level (including frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation (SD) and inferentiallevel (including statistical tests comparing independent group means, correlation coefficient test, and multivariable regression) in SPSS 22 software. Result: The results showed that the level ofutilization for people who had routine exercises and jugging was 0.3 units of SD upper than others. Meanwhile, by increasing exercise frequency, level of religious beliefs and opinions and the having aproper and healthy diet, the utilization of healthcare services decreases by −0.198, −0.150 and −0.196, respectively. In fact, 5.5% of changes in health services utilization variable are explained by the researchindependent variables. Conclusion: The study showed that doctors’ recommendations on physical activities, reasonable increase in exercise frequency, access to rich and healthy food, and religiousbeliefs can affect old people’s utilization of health services; but they cannot explain all variances of it. Therefore, according to complexity of health related issues, other involved variables should be identified and investigated.

کلیدواژه ها:

Cultural factors ، elderly people ، hospitals ، utilization of health services