Effects of self- care program education of patients on complications of multiple sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic and incurable disease of central nervous system (CNS), which causes a lot of complications and problems for patients and leads to their life dependency and disability. Thus, it is necessary to utilize appropriate methods and interventions in order to reduce these problems in MS patients. The purpose of this research, which was done in the Iranian MS Society, was to find out the effects of a self- care education program on complications of MS patients. In this quasi – experimental study, 34 patients with MS were selected based on purposive and accessible sampling method. Before implementing the education program, primary information (demographic data and complications resulting from MS) were collected through demographic and health- problem index questionnaires. After studying the obtained data and identifying the complications resulted and the necessary care program instructional classes were held for seven sessions to acquaint MS patients with causes, diagnostic methods, treatment, and self-care programs as regards its complications. Then, self-care programme was followed by patients for one month and researchers, too, checked the subjects through reportorial revision checklists. Again, health-problem index questionnaires were filled out by the same subjects after one month. Pre/Post intervention data were analysed by means of SPSS software, descriptive statistical methods, including Student paired-t, and Wilcoxon tests at the significant level P<0.05. There was a highly significant (P=0.0001) difference between the rate of complications before and after the self-care education programme the mean score increased from “3” to “26.76” before and after education, respectively.. Moreover, before the intervention 26.5 % of the subjects had muscular seizure, 55.9% fatigue, 44.1% constipation, and 23.5% suffered from amnesia. But after one month, these percentages changed to 5.9%, 14.7%, 11.8%, and 14.7% respectively (P<0.05). Self-care education increases patients’ taking self- care and reduces some of the complications of MS. Therefore, it is recommend that self- care education programs should be used to decrease these complications.