Bariatric surgery, such as gastric bypass surgery (GBS) and laparoscopic gastric banding (Lap-band), has emerged in response to the epidemic of obesity which is now the leading cause of preventable death in the United States (U.S.),second only to smoking. Although the majority of bariatric surgical patients experience successful outcomes, the overall failure rate (those who fail to lose weight
or regain more than 50% of their excess body weight lost (Deitel, 2001; Halverson,1981)) of bariatric surgeries is approximately 20% (Benotti & Forse, 1995; Rusch & Andris, 2007).
Research has been done which studied the physiological issues related to this surgery; however, little is known about possible psychological and sociological factors that influence weight loss and maintenance in post-operative bariatric patients. While there is research that has identified self-efficacy as influencing weight loss
maintenance in medical weight loss programs, to date there is no published research linking the construct of self-efficacy to weight loss maintenance in bariatric patients.
Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the role of self-efficacy on weight loss maintenance in post-operative bariatric surgical patients.
This study was guided by social cognitive theory of which self-efficacy is an important construct and incorporated a descriptive, correlational design. A study questionnaire was administered to 91 bariatric patients from two bariatric surgical centers in Northeast Ohio. Descriptive statistics, correlation, and multiple regression were used to answer the research questions. Findings revealed that of all study
variables only self-efficacy was found to be associated with weight loss maintenance in multivariate regression (p > 0.001) and explained 41% of the variance in the
regression model.
This study represents the first research done in nursing to find a significant relationship between level of self-efficacy and a bariatric patient’s ability to maintain
weight loss. Findings from this study can lay the groundwork for future intervention studies investigating manipulation of factors that can influence self-efficacy and
weight loss maintenance.