The Effect of Educational Program on Self-Management of Patients with Epilepsy: A Randomized Clinical Trial Study

Patients with epilepsy need to learn to identify seizure-inducing factors in order to adapt to seizure activity and disease management and taking precautionary measures to minimize seizure damage. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of an educational program on self-management empowerment of patients with epilepsy.

This quasi-experimental study was conducted on 90 patients with epilepsy referring to Iranian Epilepsy Association. The study used convenient sampling and samples were randomly divided into two groups: control (n= 45) and experimental group (n=45). The control group received routine training and the experimental group in addition to routine training, participated in three educational sessions held by the researcher in Epilepsy Association. All the patients completed a self-management questionnaire before and six weeks after the intervention. The data were analyzed by SPSS 22 using Kolmogorov-Smirnov, independent paired t-test and descriptive statistics.

The findings showed that there were no significant differences between the two groups in terms of demographic characteristics (P>0.05). Before implementing educational program, the two groups showed no significant difference in medication, knowledge, information, safety and seizure scores (P> 0.05). After implementing educational program the two groups showed significant difference in the scores (P<0.01), which is indicative of the increased scores in experimental group.

The results of the study indicated that the education has been effective in information, seizure control and safety of people with epilepsy. Implementation of such programs in order to better accommodate people with epilepsy with their illness is recommended.