Life Constraints and Self- Management Strategies of Older People Living with Chronic Illness. A Qualitative Study

Keywords: Chronic illness; Diabetes mellitus; Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; Heart failure; Self-Management; Life constraints; Older people; Empowerment; Quality care; Qualitative study Introduction In the 21st century, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) cause approximately 41 million deaths each year, equivalent to around 71% of all deaths globally [1]. According to the World Health Organization, although longevity increased globally by >6 years in 2019 on average, compared with 2000, only 5 of those additional years were lived in good health; people are living longer but with more disability [2]. To a further extent, inductive content analysis is a systematic and objective method that can be used by the qualitative researcher to gain a thorough understanding of the data and to methodically reduce a big volume of textual data into a clear, short summary of key findings [20]. According to this model, words and sentences of the interviews' text were comprised the units of analysis.