Saturday, 28 October 2017: 2:15 PM
Background/Significance. Around the world, nurses provide assistance to families in helping promote health and wellness. In order to do this effectively, nurses need to have a better understanding of the needs of these families across cultures. Mothers are important to determining the health and wellness needs of the family in Thai culture; however, limited information exists regarding these needs. The purpose of this investigation was to examine Thai mother’s perceptions of the health and wellness needs of their family. The research question was: What are Thai mother’s perceptions of the health and wellness needs of their family? Theoretical Framework. Socioecological Framework Sample. Thai mothers (N = 153) with elementary school children. Settings. An elementary school in a city in Thailand. Methods. In an exploratory cross sectional study, participants completed a 92-item survey on their perceptions of the health and wellness needs of their family. The reliability of the survey subscales ranged from 0.77-0.93. Results: A majority of the Thai mothers (98.6%) held jobs, with 37% working more than 40 hours/week. Over fifty percent perceived themselves as being normal or underweight. Overweight mothers were significantly more concerned about eating family dinners together (t[150]=-2.066, p=0.041) and relaxing together (t[147]=-2.095, p=0.038) than normal or underweight mothers. College educated mothers reported having more time to be healthy, (M=3.39, SD=1.311) than mothers without a college degree (M=3.89, SD=1.306). Lower income mothers were significantly more likely (M=4.53, SD=1.115) to worry about good health insurance for the family than mothers with higher incomes (M=3.8, SD=1.605). Part time workers also worried significantly more about the cost of health insurance than full time workers (t[147]=2.229, p=0.027). Conclusions and Implications. The participating mothers had significant differences in their perspectives based on education, weight, work hours, and income. Access to insurance was one of the major concerns reported in this study. This data provides insight into some of the health and wellness concerns within Thai families, which can be explored in more depth in future studies. In particular, it is important to explore more into why concerns are reported regarding health insurance as Thailand has a universal health care system in place.