The Effect of Discharge Education on the Quality of Life of Burned Patients

Abstract

Abstract: Introduction and Objective: Burn is a skin damage or other structure of tissues that occurs primarily through heat or other acute trauma. Studies show that at least 5 percent of all hospitalized patients are burned patients. Many physical, psychological, social and economic complications have been reported after discharge, which has a negative impact on the quality of life of burn patients. In recent years, quality of life has been considered in medical and nursing research as an important indicator for assessing personal health, deciding and judging the general health of the community, and identifying the basic problems of various aspects of life in individuals. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of pre-discharge educational program on the quality of life of patients with burns. Materials and Methods: This is a pre and post-experimental study with control group that was conducted in Tabriz Nursing and Midwifery Faculty in 2015. The research sample consisted of 128 burn patients hospitalized in burn wards of women and men in Sina Hospital. The instrument for data collection was a questionnaire, containing demographic and burn information and burn-specific health scale–brief (BSHS-B) questionnaire.. The quality of life of the patients with burns was assessed in three phases by the BSHS-B questionnaire. The data were analyzed in SPSS-21. Results:The results of variance analysis of repeated measurements were used to determine the relationship between the two groups as independent variable and quality of life scores during the three different periods (before, one month and three months after discharge) as a dependent variable. The quality of life has a statistically significant difference over three different time intervals, and in general it can be said that approximately 80% of variance in the quality of life scores is explained by the independent variable The results of multiple regression analysis on the effect of some underlying and burn related factors on quality of life showed a significant negative relationship between burn percentage and quality of life. so that with a one percent increase in the burn percentage , the quality of life of patients decreased by 0.112 times . The results of the model do not show a significant relationship between age,gender, length of stay and quality of life. Discussion and Conclusion: Highly inflated studies have examined the effect of education on the quality of life of burn patients. Although in most of these studies, burn patients were of low quality in terms of quality of life, the same results did not have a significant effect on the quality of life of these patients. Different cultural backgrounds and unmatched research tools in these studies may be the main reasons for the differences observed. Based on the obtained results of this study, designing and and the needs of burn patients and a follow-up will improve their quality of life. Therefore, it is recommended that this program should be considered as a part of treatment program for these patients.