Eunice EmÃlia Santos Lopes Martins Henriques
Lisbon School of Nursing, Portugal
Title: Effective management of symptoms – a nursing intervention
Biography
Biography: Eunice EmÃlia Santos Lopes Martins Henriques
Abstract
Effective symptom management is considered an essential component of nursing care practice for different clinical conditions, but it is particularly important in chronic diseases (Sidani, 2001), as is the case with HIV infection. Thus, the purpose of this research was to develop a nursing intervention program that demonstrates its effects on symptom management and consequently adherence to antiretroviral therapy in the person with HIV infection. This is a study who the sample was 73 participants with symptoms of anxiety, fatigue, fear, depression and headaches. The majority of participants (95.9%) reported never having failed the therapy, 24.7% took the therapy as they learned, "every time", 57.5% reported adhering to instructions, 91.8% said did not forget, 28.8% reported "never having stopped taking". As for the reason for not taking, at 15% was simply forgetting. Regarding evaluation pre and post intervention of the manual of symptom management strategies use, by the Wilcoxon test, the differences were shown to be statistically significant in the symptoms anxiety, fear and fatigue confirming the theoretical construct that the use of the manual improved these three symptoms. On the other hand, the use of the manual helped to reduce the failures in antiretroviral therapy, with statistically significant differences.
The study showed that symptom management is a sensitive indicator of nursing care, where the intervention of the nurse, wherever it takes place, privileges the quality of communication and relation with the sick person and helps to improve the management of its symptoms, as well as adherence to antiretroviral therapy.