Relationship between quality of life and self-care ability in patients receiving hemodialysis

BACKGROUND Although hemodialysis has a therapeutic effect on end stage renal disease (ESRD), these patients encounter many physical, psychological, and social stressful factors that lead to a decrease in their quality of life (QOL). One of the factors that are effective on increasing the QOL is the self-care ability. Review of literature demonstrated a few studies done on different aspects of QOL in ESRD patients under hemodialysis and their relationships with self-care ability in Iran. So, in this research besides determining the quality of life and its dimensions and self-care ability of hemodialysis patients, we evaluated their relationships with each other. METHODS For this purpose, all hemodialysis patients who had inclusion criteria and were hospitalized in hemodialysis wards of Bonab, Maragheh, and Miandoab hospitals were selected and data were collected by interview using a questionnaire that included three parts, demographic factors, quality of life, and self-care ability. RESULTS The results indicated that quality of life in 34%, and self-care ability in 78.3% of hemodialysis patients were desirable, and there was a direct and significant relationship between these two variables (p < 0.001, r = 0.4), as self-care ability explained 29% of variance of QOL. In quality of life subsectors, social dimension in 98.3% of patients was desirable, while physical dimension (80%) and psychological dimension (63.5%) in most patients were undesirable. Physical dimension was the most impressible dimension of quality of life in self-care ability whereas self-care ability explained 27% of total variance of physical dimension of QOL. CONCLUSIONS Nearly two thirds of mentioned patients had no desirable QOL and regarding the positive relationship between QOL and self-care ability, it is suggested that health care planner and managers prepare the condition that through educating and reinforcing self-care ability in these patients improve the QOL in hemodialysis patients.