Abstract:
The purpose of this quasi-experimental research was to study the effect of childcare behavior promoting program for caregivers on severity of illness in 1-5 year old asthmatic children. Subjects of this study were 46 one to five years old asthmatic children and their caregivers at the pulmonary clinic of pediatrics department, Chonburi Hospital. Twenty-four pairs were randomly assigned to the control group and 22 pairs were in the experimental group. The control group received conventional nursing care while the experimental group received the four - week childcare behavior promoting program. This program was guided by the health-deviation self-care requisites of Orem (2001). It was verified by 7 experts. The program included relationship formation, explanation of the necessity of childcare behavior on severity of asthmatic illness, knowledge on asthma, and environmental management. Data were collected twice, before and 2 weeks after receiving the program, by the illness severity interview developed by the researcher. Its content validity index was .88 and interrater reliability was .84. Data were analyzed by mean, standard deviation, and ANCOVA with pretest as the covariate, at the level of statistical significance of .05. It was found that the severity of illness in 1-5 year old asthmatic children after their caregivers received the program was lower than that of the group receiving conventional nursing care at the level of statistical significance of .05.