The Effect of Spiritual Self-Care Education on the Care Burden of Mothers With Children Hospitalized in Intensive Care Units for Open Heart Surgery

Spiritual health of caregivers has association with the patients’ health, but less attention has been paid to spiritual self-care education in health programs. This study aimed to assess the effect of spiritual self-care education on the care burden of mothers with children in hospitalized in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) for open heart surgery.

This quasi-experimental study was conducted on 60 mothers of children hospitalized in ICUs of Shahid Modarres Hospital in Tehran, Iran. They were selected randomly from among those gave informed consent to participate in the study. The data collection tools were a demographic form and Zarit Burden Interview which were completed before and after intervention. The spiritual self-care education was presented using the teaching aids in four 45-min sessions, twice a week. Collected data were analyzed in SPSS V. 24 software using descriptive (frequency, percentage) and inferential (paired t-test) statistics at a significance level of P<0.05.

 Before the intervention, 72.3% of the samples had a severe care burden and 24.5% had a very severe care burden, which decreased after the intervention such that only 32.7% had a severe care burden. The mean and standard deviation of mothers’ care burden also decreased after the educational intervention (from 62.3±7.6 to 42.1±3.8). The results of paired t-test showed that this difference was statistically significant (P<0.001).

 Spiritual self-care education can reduce the care burden of children’ caregivers; hence, planning and implementing appropriate programs to increase self-care knowledge of caregivers (especially the mothers of children with heart problems) and medical staff and paying more attention to mothers’ education are recommended.