The Effectiveness of Spiritual Confrontation Skills on Pain Self-efficacy in Patients with Severe Thalassemia

Background and Purpose: Thalassemia is a chronic genetic disorder caused by the deficiency of one or more multi-chain polypeptide globin. This disease is transmitted from generation to generation according to Mendelchr('39')s laws of inheritance. The resent study aimed to assess the effectiveness of spiritual coping skills training in pain self-efficacy in patients with severe thalassemia. Materials and Methods: This quasi-experimental study was conducted based on a pre-and post-test design with control group. The statistical population included all patients with severe thalassemia who referred to the thalassemia center of Chabahar Public Hospital on a weekly basis for treatment and blood sampling in the first six months of 2018. For the purpose of the study, 30 subjects were selected by convenience sampling method and randomly assigned to two groups of spiritual coping skills and control group. The subjects in the case group received eight sessions of weekly training with Noori and Bolhari (2011) Spiritual Coping Skills method. Pain Self-efficacy Questionnaire (PSEQ) was used for data collection. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and ANCOVA. Results: The results of descriptive statistics and pain self-efficacy scores demonstrated a marked improvement in the condition of the participants in the case group, compared to the control group. Moreover, the results of the t-test indicated that the training of spiritual coping skills significantly improved the mean scores of pain self-efficacy in the case group, compared to the control group (P<0.01). Conclusion: As evidenced by the obtained results, spiritual coping skills were effective in improving pain self-efficacy in patients with severe thalassemia. It is suggested that spiritual coping skills training be provided, apart from medical treatments.