Factors associated with perceived health in elderly medical inpatients: a particular focus on personal coping...

We wanted to unveil associations between perceived health and physical health, function in activity of daily living, anxiety, depression and coping resources in terms of sense of coherence (SOC) in elderly (≥65 years) in-hospital patients without cognitive impairment.

In a cross-sectional study, we evaluated 217 hospitalized elderly patients with an age range 65-95 (mean 77.9) years. Perceived health was rated on a four-point scale. Physical health was measured with the Charlson index; functional status was rated using the Lawton and Brody's scale for self-maintaining and instrumental activities of daily living; and, anxiety and depression were rated using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale. Finally, the 13-item version of the SOC scale was used to assess coping, and cognitive state was assessed using the Mini-mental State Examination.

In all, 40% of the patients reported good perceived health. In an adjusted logistic regression analysis, the main outcome good perceived health was associated with increasing age: odds ratio (OR) 1.06 (95% CI 1.01-1.11); good physical health: OR 2.49 (95% CI 1.22-5.07); and, medium high and high SOC: OR 2.48 (95% CI 1.20-5.13), and OR 2.43 (95% CI 1.11-5.28), respectively. Explained variance was 22.2%.

Good coping resources and low severity of co-morbid disorders are the two most important factors that explain why elderly inpatients rate their health as good. Since coping may be equally important as poor physical health for perception of health, coping should be recognized and measured in clinical practice.