effect of self care education with and without telephone follow-up on the level of hope in renal dialysis patients: a single-blind randomized controlled clinical trial

background: various strategies such as teaching self care to hemodialysis patients have been employed to increase the level of their hope. this study aimed at examining the effects of a telephone follow-up program on the level of hope in a self care education program. methods: in this single-blind randomized controlled clinical trial, 75 hemodialysis patients, selected by convenient sampling, were randomly assigned to 3 groups (n=25 each) including a control, a self care education, or a self care education with telephone follow-up. the control group received the routine care. the self care education group received 5 instruction sessions. the telephone follow-up group had similar instructional sessions followed by telephone calls during the subsequent 2 months. data, collected using demographic information list and miller’s hope questionnaire, were analyzed using chi-square, t-test, and one-way anova followed by scheffee test. results: there was no significant difference among the scores of hope in the three groups before the intervention (p=0.40). however, after the intervention, the level of hope in the self care education group and self care education plus telephone follow-up groups were significantly higher than that of the control group (p=0.001). moreover, the level of hope in the group with self care education plus telephone follow-up was significantly (p=0.001) more than that of the self care education group. conclusion: our findings indicated that teaching followed by telephone follow-up was associated with higher levels of hope. therefore, such a strategy may be employed to improve the quality of life of patients with renal dialysis. trial registration number: irct2014042617440n1