Effect of self-care training on applying coping strategies of adolescents

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