Experiences of Patients with Multiple Sclerosis about Physical Effects of their Illness and shift in quality of life: A phenomenological study

Introduction and objective: Multiple sclerosis is one of the life-altering and incurable diseases that present in the prime of life. Considering the high prevalence rate and multifaceted of this chronic disease and importance of patient’s experiences to help nurses for better understanding of their concerns, provide a proper evaluation and education that lead to improvement patient’s quality of life, this research was carried out to answer the following research question: "What are the experiences of multiple sclerosis patients about physical effects of this disorder and how this experiences change their life style and treat their quality of life?" Method: In this phenomenological study, 14 multiple sclerosis patients as informant were selected by goal-oriented sampling from those patients attended to multiple sclerosis center in Isfahan. Data were collected by deep semi-structured interview with open-end questions and analyzed by collaizi method. Result: Result of this study showed that multiple sclerosis patients attribute the physical changes of their disease to the following eight domains: mobility and activity, rest and sleep pattern, sexual activity, voiding and deification pattern, temperature, vision, sensational status and self care. Conclusion: According to the results, disturbance in a physical domain can affect on other physiological domains. Most of patients were feeling tired and presented job disturbances and difficulty in daily activities when temperature rose whereas they were experimented a better activities in cold environments. Also visual disturbance may lead to self care deficit, decreasing mobility and physical activity which in turn disturb autonomous functions.

Chronic illness, Multiple sclerosis, phenomenology