Abstract:
The purposes of this quasi-experimental research was to compare the effect of tobacco cessation counseling program and tobacco cessation counseling program combined with reflexology on smoking cessation behaviors. The study samples were sixty adult patients diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, diabetes, hypertension, or cardiovascular disease, recruited from inpatient units of a general hospital in Mahasarakham province. The samples were assigned into two groups. The groups were matched in term of age and number of cigarettes smoked per day. The samples in both groups were given the same intensive cessation counseling intervention but the experimental group was given hand reflexology. The intensive counseling intervention was composed of six individual sessions counseling and two follow-up telephone counseling sessions. Smoking cessation behavior was assessed after two months by a self-reported questionnaire that had high internal consistency with alpha coefficients of .87 Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and t-test. The results showed that after receiving the intervention, the mean score for smoking cessation behavior of the experimental group was significantly higher before the intervention (p<.05). In addition, the mean score of smoking cessation behavior for the experimental group was significantly higher than that for the control group (p<.05).
TRC Data Center