The Effect of Self-Care Program on Relief of Skin Complications of Psoriasis

Psoriasis is an unpredictable, chronic, cutaneous disease with recurrence period that could lead to disability and psychosis. Evidence shows that in addition to routine therapeutic procedures implementing self-care program can contribute to reduction of complications as an inexpensive method. Hence, this study was conducted with the aim of investigating the effect of self-care program on relief of the disease complications in Tehran in 2002. This quasi-experimental study (before and after) was carried out on 50 patients. Self-care program was performed in different fields (food, medicine, bathing, washing, type of clothing, temperature, …) through face to face education and role playing and the cases were investigated in terms of symptom severity (skin dryness including splitting and flaking itching and existence of new plaque) every two weeks for three months. To collect data questionnaire, self-reporting check list, observational check list with Likert scale and correlation of 92.5% were used whose validity had been confirmed through content validity. The data analysis was performed using t-test and Wilcoxon. The results showed that 64% of the studied patients were male, 54% employed, 72% married and 42% had university degrees. 34% were 11-20 years old with the mean age of 11.9. The results indicated that the mean skin splitting severity decreased from 2.34 to 0.04%, flaking from 4.48 to 0.5, itching from 2.5 to 0.54 and area of lesion from 81.77 to 27.33 after intervention (P=0.0001). The comparison of behavior before and after intervention showed that the extent of all self-care behaviors increased significantly (P=0.001). The research results show that implementation of self-care program reduces the severity of skin symptoms. Thus, administration of this inexpensive, accessible program in care plans of patients to lower the physical, mental, familial, and social problems of patients is recommended.