The Effect of Self-care Education on knowledge and Attitude in Patients with Asthma: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Abstract

Introduction: Asthma is one of the most common chronic respiratory diseases and one of the major problems in health systems in many societies around the world including Iran. Self-care is one of the most important factors in raising the awareness and attitude of individuals. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of self-care education on knowledge and attitude of patients with asthma. Methods: In this quasi-experimental study, 104 patients with asthma were selected by available sampling method and randomly divided into two groups (n=52) and control (n=52). Both groups filled the questionnaire of awareness and attitude before the intervention. The self-care group was trained in four sessions of 60 minutes. The questionnaire was filled again this time by both groups, 8 weeks after the intervention. and the data was analyzed using SPSS 16, descriptive statistics, independent t-test and paired t-test at 95% confidence interval. Results: The results showed that there was no significant difference between the mean and standard deviation of knowledge and attitude scores before and after self-care education (P> 0.05). There was a statistically significant difference between the mean and standard deviation of the knowledge and attitude of the experimental and control groups after the training (P<0.05). The results showed that the knowledge and attitude of the experimental group significantly improved after the intervention. Conclusion: The results of this study showed that self-care education is effective on knowledge and attitude in asthmatic patients. Therefore, considering the high prevalence of this disease and its economic and social burden, self-care education is recommended to improve the knowledge and attitude of asthmatic patients.

Keywords

• self-care
• knowledge
• attitude
• asthma