Improving Quality of Life for Children with Cochlear Implantation at Beni-Suef City

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Nursing specialist in Beni- Suef specialized hospital

2 Assistant. Professor of Community Health Nursing, Faculty of Nursing – Beni-Suef University

Abstract

Background: Pediatric cochlear implantation affects not only communication skills such as speech recognition, speech production, and language use but also interactions with others and how children feel about themselves, so cochlear implantation is highly improved in different quality of life aspects among children with hearing loss. Aim: the study aimed to improve the quality of life for children with cochlear implantation.Design: a quasi-experimental design was utilized in the current study. Sample: a convenient sample of a total 160 of mothers and 160 children after cochlear implementation was randomly divided equally into two groups, (control group and study group.Setting: The study was conducted at Ear, Nose, and Throat outpatient clinics at Beni-Suef University Hospital.Tools: Two tools were utilized to collect data for the current study. The first tool: the Structured interviewing questionnaire sheet had four parts, mothers' socio-demographic characteristics, children's sociodemographic characteristics, knowledge, and self-reported practice of mothers' assessment for their children with cochlear implantation, The Second Tool was the children's Quality of life questionnaire. Results: the study findings revealed that 87.5% of the mothers in the study group had a good level of knowledge as compared with 12.5% of mothers in the control group, 85.0% of the children in the study group had a high level of quality of life as compared with only 10.0% of children in the control group, and 88.8% of the studied mothers in the study group had a satisfactory level of practice toward caring their children. Conclusion: the educational intervention program is positively improving the studied mothers' knowledge and practice about caring for children with cochlear implementation subsequently improving the quality of life of the cochlear implementation children on average. Recommendation: a training program for mothers about caring for their children after cochlear implementation is highly recommended.

Keywords