Educação em saúde para mulheres no climatério: impactos na qualidade de vida

Abstract

Aims

Evaluate the effects of a multidisciplinary process of health education (HE) on quality of life (QoL) of climacteric women.

Methods

A quasi‐experimental research with 14 women between 40 and 65 years old was carried out. Seven comprised the control group (CG) and the others formed the experimental group (EG), subjected to the HE. Six weekly sessions of 90 minutes each were performed, with a total of nine hours. To assess the QoL of the participants, it has been used the WHOQOL‐bref ‐ elaborated by the World Health Organization ‐ for pre and post‐tests. This instrument assesses four domains (Physical, Psychological, Social Relationships and Environment) and global QoL.

Results

There was a significant difference between groups in the Social Relationships domain, causing an increase of this factor in the EG and decrease in the CG.

Conclusions

Although positive, this result reveals the importance of assessing whether the HE processes promote QoL in their various domains. Due to its preventive and health promotion character, the HE should be the subject of constant research in order to develop and improve educational technologies to promote health of the climacteric women, especially QoL.