An Inquiry to the Causal Perceptions & Health Seeking Behaviors of Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients

This study was undertaken to investigate the causal perceptions and health seeking behaviors of Rheumatoid arthritis patients, define and understand the typology, and find the relationship between causal perceptions and health seeking behavioral types. There were six types(Physical Fatigue, Dispensation of Nature, Causality to Environment, Conscience of Guilty, Rationally perceiving, Psychological Stress) of subjective opinion about Causal Perceptions of Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients. And there were four types(Oriental medical Treatment, Information Seeking, Dietary Control. Western Medical Treatment) of subjective opinion about Health Seeking Behaviors. In the relationship between types of the causal perceptions and health seeking behaviors, oriental medical treatment and information seeking type were common health seeking behaviors of all six causal perception types. Only difference for internal causal perception types was related to hospital instructions and external causal perception types were related to dietary control. The result of this study can help health care providers, especially nurses to understand the types of causal perceptions and health seeking behaviors of Rheumatoid arthritis patients to gain treatment compliance from patients according to their causal perceptions of the illness, and use it to develop educational nursing intervention to aid health care.