Evaluating self-management in epilepsy patients

pilepsy is a chronic, neurological disease that affects a significant part of an individual's life, causing significant limitations in physical, intellectual, emotional and social life, leading to mandatory and traumatic events in daily life. Therefore, gaining and applying self-management behavior is very important in epilepsy patients. These behaviors include using regular medication, organizing the lifestyle according to the disease, having sufficient information about the disease, knowing the traumatic situations at the time of the seizure and taking the safety precautions that provide the appropriate environment accordingly, and managing all of these situations synchronously. The population of the study consisted of 480 patients who applied to Çukurova University Balcalı Hospital Neurology Outpatient Clinic between September-November / 2019. The sample of the study consisted of 110 patients who met the inclusion criteria. The data were collected by using the "Patient Diagnosis Form" and "Epilepsy Self Management Scale" created by the researcher by examining the literature. SPSS (IBM SPSS Statistics 24) package program was used to evaluate the data. Frequency tables and descriptive statistics were used in the analysis of the data. In the study, "Mann-Whitney U" test was used, and "Kruskal-Wallis H" test was used to compare three or more independent groups with the measured values. In the study, the total self-management scale score average of individuals with epilepsy was 142.43 ± 16.05. When the scores between the sub-dimensions of the scale are analyzed, it was stated that the highest score average was 44.93 ± 5.52 with the drug management sub-dimension and the lowest score average was 20.28 ± 5.03 with the lifestyle management sub-dimension. In addition, the total scores of epilepsy self-management scale of those who stated that they adapted to the disease were found to be statistically significantly higher than those who stated that they did not adapt to the disease (F = 5.785; p = 0.004). As a result of the research, in this study conducted to determine the self-management levels of patients with epilepsy; In this scale applied to adult epilepsy patients, epilepsy self-management levels were found to be high. It is important that nurses should inform individuals with epilepsy about self-management by using their educational roles, and it is important to use more of self-management education programs in the society in general. Key Words: Disease, Epilepsy, Self-Management, Nursing