Effect of Self Care Guidelines on Quality of Life for Leukemic Patients Undergoing Chemotherapy

Abstract

Backgound: Patients with leukemia undergoing chemotherapy have problems and side effects which are considered life-threatening and affect their quality of life. This requires self-care guidelines for those patients to improve their quality of life. Aim: The aim of this study was to assess the effect of self-care guidelines on the quality of life for patients with leukemia undergoing chemotherapy. Study Design: A quasi experimental design. Setting: the study was conducted at the in-patient and out-patient clinics in the Hematology Unit affiliated to Ain Shams University Hospital. Study subjects: A purposive sample of adult patients newly diagnosed with leukemia (No=100). Data collection tools: Structured interview questionnaire for the patients with leukemia undergoing chemotherapy, quality of life cancer survivors questionnaire, and patients’ self-care practices observational checklist. Results: (28%) of the control group and (84%) of the study group got a total satisfactory level of knowledge post the implementation of self-care guidelines with a highly statistical significant difference between them at P value < 0.001, while there was a highly statistical significant difference between the study and control groups regarding the satisfactory level of self-care practices post the implementation of self-care guidelines at p-value <0.001. Moreover, there was a highly statistical significant difference between the study and control groups regarding the total quality of life post the implementation of self-care guidelines at P<0.001. Conclusion: the implementation of self-care guidelines had a statistically significant positive effect on the quality of life dimensions for patients with leukemia undergoing chemotherapy. Recommendations: Designing systematically continuous self-care guidelines in other media such as: newspapers, television, and the radio to help improve the health status of those patients and manage the chemotherapy side effects, a simplified, comprehensive and illustrated Arabic language guided booklet with images about self-care guidelines should be submitted to each newly admitted patient with leukemia and replication of the current study on a large sample is recommended to achieve generalization of the results and wider utilization of self-care guidelines.