[Promoting health status of menopausal women by educating self care strategies]

ABSTRACT

Menopause is an important event in women's lives. By increasing life expectancy, women spend about one-third of their lives in menopausal stage. Lack of knowledge about self-care and unhealthy life style in menopause women result in many of serious damages in this period. This study is to determine the effect of educating self care strategies on knowledge and practice of menopausal women. This is a semi-experimental study. A total of 81 women were selected using convenience sampling method. All women completed an 11-item questionnaire covering demographic information, medical history, lifestyle and current symptoms and their severity. The women completed pre- and post-intervention [at the baseline and 6 weeks later] questionnaire which assessed knowledge and beliefs about menopause and a number of health-related behaviors. The intervention included giving information and group discussion about menopause, stress management, health behaviors [smoking, exercise, diet] and treatment choices. The results indicated that at the baseline, 22.2% had poor knowledge, 64.2% had average and 13.6% had good knowledge. Following the educational intervention, none of the respondents had poor knowledge. 27.5% were at average and 72.5% were at good level of knowledge. According to the findings, education had strong effect on promoting the respondents' knowledge about self-care strategies. We believe the stronger efforts are needed to promote good health-related behaviors for these women