Diabetes mellitus is one of the most common chronic non curable diseases affect children and adolescents. So, it requires sustained and coordinated educational support for those young patients to live peacefully and happily with it. Implementing educational programs for those children and adolescents is crucial for maintaining their life and improving their quality of life. Therefore, the aim of this study was to illustrate the effect of an educational program on the quality of life of diabetic children and adolescents, through identifying children and adolescents' knowledge and practice regarding care of themselves, design, implement and evaluate the constructed educational program according to children and adolescents' deficit. A quasi experimental (intervention) study with a sample of 100 males and females diabetic children and adolescents, with age ranged from 10-18 years. The study was conducted at the outpatient pediatric and diabetes clinics of school health insurance hospital at Benha City. The tools of data collection were 1) Interviewing questionnaire was constructed by the researcher, to assess their knowledge about diabetes, and quality of life 2) Observational checklist to assess their care of themselves. The results revealed that, there were statistical significance differences immediately post /3 months after implementation of the educational program compared with pre program implementation in knowledge self care practice. There were highly statistical significant differences in quality of life domains 3 months after the program compared with pre program. There were a highly statistical significance correlation between total knowledge and total practice, total quality of life and total knowledge and total practice, total quality of life and glycemic control before and 3 months after the program. It was concluded from the study that, there were an improvement in knowledge, practice and quality of life of the study subjects after implementation of the program. The study recommended conducting educational programs for medical, nursing staff, socialists, pharmacist, parents, school teachers, school doctor and school health nurse about various aspects of type 1 diabetes in children and adolescents about their care, and importance of enhancing their QOL. |
