The effect of family-centered empowerment model on the Quality of Life of school-age B-thalassemic children

Background: Thalassemia is one of the most common human genetic diseases and like other chronic diseases affects different aspects and quality of patient's life. The present research attempted to investigate the effect of family-centered empowerment model on the quality of life (QOL) of school-age thalassemic children.
Methods: The present semi-experimental practical research is performed on 35 (test group) and 15 (control group) thalassemic children. The research tools included the questionnaires of demographic information, children's Quality of life (Peds QOL) and children's quality of life in thalassemia dimension. After the collection of pre-test data, the family-centered empowerment model was implemented for children and parents in test group according to its four steps (perception threat, problem solving, educational participation and evaluation). The post test was carried out 1/5 months after the intervention.
Findings: χ² test showed that there was no significant difference between the test and control groups in terms of demographic characteristics (P>0.05). Also before intervention we observed no significant difference in the QOL of the children both in general independent t-test. While, after the intervention, independent t-test showed a significant difference between the two groups in terms of the difference of means of Peds QOL and thalassemia dimension before and after the intervention. Also, the paired t-test showed a significant difference before and after the intervention in the test group in terms of the ped's QOL and QOL in thalassemia dimension (P= 0.0001).
Conclusions: Our findings showed that the family-centered empowerment model was effective on increasing the quality of life of school age thalassemic children.

Keywords
School age children , Thalassemia , Quality of life , Family , Centered care , Empowerment