THE EFFECT OF SELF-MANAGEMENT PROGRAM BASED ON VIRTUAL GROUP DISCUSSION ON SLEEP QUALITY IN MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS PATIENTS

Multiple sclerosis is one of the most common chronic and debilitating diseases of the nervous system. Sleep disorder is one of the most important complications of this disease that affects the patient's quality of life. This study was conducted with the aim of investigating the effect of a self-management program based on virtual group discussion on sleep quality in the patients with multiple sclerosis patients.

The current research is a semi-experimental study with a pre-post-test design, conducted with the participation of 60 patients referred to the Urmia MS association in 2021, who were selected by convenient sampling and divided randomly into control and experimental groups (30 patients in each group). Patients of the intervention group received the educational content of self-management program through discussions with other group members on WhatsApp during 6 sessions and for one month. Patients of the intervention group received the educational content of the self-management program through discussions with other group members on WhatsApp during 6 sessions and for one month. Patients in the control group did not receive any training. Pittsburgh sleep quality questionnaire (PSQI) and demographic questionnaires were completed by the patients before and after the intervention. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics by SPSS version 22 statistical software.

The study groups were homogeneous in terms of demographic variables there was no significant difference between them (p>0.05). The results of the paired t-test showed that, unlike the control group, the mean score of sleep quality decreased significantly after the intervention (p = 0.001). Also, the results showed that the average score of sleep quality after the intervention had a statistically significant difference between the groups, so that after the implementation of the self-management program, sleep quality improved significantly in the intervention group (p<0.05).

The results of the study showed that the implementation of a self-management program based on group discussion in a virtual way has an effect on the sleep quality of multiple sclerosis patients and so could be used as one of the methods to improve the symptoms and improve the sleep quality in this patients.