The effect of family-centered education on the quality of life of adolescents with spinal cord injuries

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Spinal injury is a destructive complication creating huge changes in the teen health and lifestyle, depending on its extent and severity. Although most of the complications of this disease are treatable, they impose huge costs on the healthcare system, the patient, and his family. The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of family-centered education on the quality of life and self-esteem of adolescents with spinal cord injuries. METHOD: The present study is a quasi-experimental study. Adolescents (108 old) with spinal cord injuries entered the present study through stratified sampling with appropriate allocation. The participants were compared in two groups of experimental and control. The data was collected using demographic information questionnaire as well as Ferrans and Powers’ quality of life index in spinal cord injury. Four weeks after the intervention, the research questionnaires were completed once more by the adolescents of both groups. Data analysis was conducted by using T-square test, independent t-test, Fisher's exact test, and analysis of variance. FINDING: According to results, quality of life mean score of adolescents with spinal cord injuries was 23.05 ± 122.65 before the intervention. It became 22.64 ± 148.15 after the intervention. With respect to importance, quality of life mean score of these adolescents changed from 20.83 ± 164.07 to 21.62 ± 174.99. CONCLUSION: Given the effect of family-centered education on the quality of life in adolescents with spinal cord injuries, it seems essential to create necessary grounds for training families having adolescents with spinal cord injuries by nurses to improve their quality of life as well as conducting researches on their problems.