The impact of educating parents of leukaemic children on the healthy siblings’ quality of life

Objective: To study the effect of educational programme for the parents on the quality of life of healthy siblings of children with leukaemia. Methods: The quasi-experimental study was conducted from January to July 2006 at the Oncology Ward of Shahid Faghihi Hospital, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Iran. It involved two groups of siblings of children with leukaemia. Parents of the children participated in 3 educational sessions and the quality of life of their healthy children was surveyed before and after education. The data was collected through a questionnaire developed by the Netherlands Organisation for Aplied Scientific Research Academic Medical Centre (TN0-AZ1) which has been specially designed for children aged 7-15 years. In this study, the parent form of the questionnaire, including 7 dimensions, was used. Sampling was done by convenient purposive method. The collected data were analysed using SPSS 11.5. Results: The differences in the quality of life scores of the experimental and control groups before and after education was -28.8¡¾11.3 and —À3.6¡¾4.5, respectively. Also by regarding the mean difference of the two groups, the independent t-test showed significant difference before and after the education (p 0.01). There was a significant difference between the two groups on all dimensions (p 0.01) in such a way that the educational interventions was able to improve the quality of life in terms of physical complaints, autonomy, social, cognitive and motor functioning, positive and negative emotions. Conclusion: The educational programme was effective in improving the quality of life and its dimensions among healthy siblings of children with leukaemia.