Introduction: Successful control of diabetes is mainly dependent on patients’ self-care behaviors. This study aimed to investigate the self-care behaviors in type 2 diabetic patients in the city of Ilam.

Materials & methods: In this cross-sectional study in 2014, 70 patients with type 2 diabetes were selected randomly by stage sampling. The instruments used in this study included a demographic questionnaire and a summary of diabetes self-care activities checklist. Data were analyzed using the SPSS-20software. To assess the correlation between the independent variables and the self-care status, one-way ANOVA and independent t-test were used.

Findings: The samples of this study were respectively at moderate (74.3%) and poor (21.4%) levels of self-care. The total mean score of the self-care was 31.44 with a standard deviation of 8.89.The percentage score of self-care was 44.9% which represents self-care behaviors lower than the moderate level. The highest amount of self-care was done by the samples in terms of smoking (97.1%) and regular oral medication use and insulin (77.9%), and the lowest level of self-care was performed in the dimension of blood glucose self-monitoring at home (18.3%). In this study, there was a significant difference between education and self-care scores; so that with increased education, self-care scores increased, but there was no significant difference between gender, marital status, occupation as well as the type of treatment and the self-care scores.

Discussion & Conclusions: Considering that most diabetic patients in this study are at moderate and poor levels in terms of self-care behaviors, there is a need to develop and support programs with educational contents and to do regular self-care follow-ups among diabetic patients.