Modern Care Journal

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Background: Providing patients with comfort is the basis of nursing care and a favorable outcome of nursing care measures. Comfort is of special importance to hemodialysis patients because they spend a large part of their lives in hemodialysis units and are constantly dealing with different physical and mental health problems. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of comfort-based interventions (back massage along with patient and family education) on the level of comfort among hemodialysis patients. Methods: As a randomized controlled trial, this study was undertaken in 2016 in the hemodialysis unit of Shahid Chamran hospital, Ferdows, Iran. A convenience sample of forty hemodialysis patients was recruited. Patients were alternately allocated to control or intervention groups based on their hemodialysis days. The hospice comfort questionnaire was completed for all participants at the beginning and at the end of the study. This questionnaire showed that the comfort needs of patients were related to muscle cramps, headache, back pain, nausea, lack of knowledge about arteriovenous fistula care, dietary and treatment regimens, itching, rest and sleep disorders, and impaired comfort. Patients in the intervention group received massage as well as patient and family education in six consecutive hemodialysis sessions, while their counterparts in the control group solely received the routine care services of the study setting. The SPSS software (v. 18.0) was used for data analysis through running the paired- and the independent-sample t tests. The significance level was set at less than 0.05. Results: The mean scores of comfort and its environmental and psychospiritual dimensions significantly increased in the intervention group (P < 0.001). Significant increases were also observed in the mean scores of comfort and its psychospiritual dimension in the control group (P < 0.05). Before the intervention, there were no significant differences between the groups respecting the mean values of comfort and its dimensions (P > 0.05). However, after the intervention, there were significant between-group differences in the mean scores of comfort and its environmental dimension as well as in the pretest-posttest mean difference for the environmental dimension of comfort.

Keywords: Comfort, Comfort-Based Interventions, Back Massage, Patient Education, Hemodialysis

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