Effect of self-care training on applying coping strategies of adolescents afflicted with thalassemia major referring to clinic of thalassemia in Amirkola pediatric hospital

Introduction: Thalasemia such as many chronic illnesses, leads adolescent to
suffer psychosocial problems. In order to cope with illness, participation of
patient in self care and coping strategies training could be very beneficial. The
aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of training on applying coping strategies
among thalassemic adolescents.
Methods: This research is a quasi-experimental study, made by using personal
information questionnaire and standard form of Jalowiec coping scale. Eighty
adolescents afflicted with thalassemia referring to clinic of thalassemia in
Amirkola pediatric hospital were selected according to research criteria on
random sampling and divided into two groups of case and control (each group 4
people). Intervention in this research is self-care training in the form of sessions
of practical and theoretical training for 45 minutes in 5 sessions during three
weeks. Part of the education was conducted individually (desferal injection) and
the rest in 5-member groups for the case group. Information pertaining to
problem-focused coping and affective-focused coping for both case and control
groups were gathered before and after intervention.
Results: There was no significant difference between mean of problem-focused
coping (P=0.386) and affective-focused coping (P=0.275) before and after selfcare
training (P>0.05), but case group used more problem-focused coping
strategies and also problem-focused coping had significant corrlelation with
regular desferal injection (P=0.001).
Conclusion: This study shows that changing coping strategies after teaching
needs time to become a habit. So it is recommended to leave three months
interval to assess the effect of teaching on coping strategies.