The effect of the children's yoga program applied to pediatric oncology patients on the child's quality of life and cortisol levels

Pediatric oncology patients experience physical and psycho-social symptoms that negatively affect their quality of life during treatment. "Yoga" practices, known as a unique physical activity that combines mind-body awareness and breathing exercises to improve the quality of life of pediatric oncology patients, have recently become popular. The study was conducted experimentally in the form of pre-test and post-test with 30 controls, 30 experimental group children who were 8-18 age and treated on 19.01.2020-19.08.2020 in the Pediatric Oncology/Hematology service of a hospital in Mersin and their parents, in order to investigate the effect of children's yoga program on the quality of life and cortisol levels of pediatric oncology patients. Ethics committee, institutional and parental consent was obtained. Data were collected using a questionnaire, the Children's Quality of Life Scale, and the cortisol kit. Participants filled out the "Children's Quality of Life Scale" Child and Parent Form before the 3-week (6 sessions) yoga program and salivary cortisol samples were taken from the children. These procedures were repeated after the yoga program. "Independent Sample-t test", "Paired Sample", "Mann Whitney U", "Wilcoxon", test and Spearman correlation coefficients were used in the analysis of quantitative variables. "Pearson -X2" crosstabs were used in the analysis of qualitative variables. At the end of the intervention, the child report total score of the experimental group increased from 55.58±15.06 to 70.83±10.22 (Z=-3.487 p=0.000), and the parent score increased from 53.73±14.29 to 70.47±11.83. The child report total score of the control group decreased from 49.67±13.71 to 44.13±16.77, and the parental score decreased from 49.17±15.28 to 37.93±13.96 (p<0.05). In the reports of children (Cronbach α: 0.904-0.943) and parents (Cronbach α: 0.888-0.939), the answers to the scale questions were found to be highly reliable. It was observed that cortisol values decreased from 3.18±2.11 to 2.26±1.92 in the experimental group and increased from 2.45±2.15 to 2.64±2.08 in the control group (p<0.05). The study found positive results in increasing the quality of life of pediatric oncology patients and reducing their stress. In order to help pediatric oncology patients improve their quality of life and reduce their stress, it is recommended that pediatric health and disease nurses integrate yoga practice into care plans while providing care to their patients, and establishing children's yoga areas where yoga practices can be practiced in hospitals' pediatric oncology services. Keywords: Child Health and Diseases Nursing, Chıld yoga, cortisol, quality of life, stres