Discussion
thalassemia, breast self-examination, diabetes
THALASSEMIA, MINOR, CHRONIC ILLNESSES, DIABETES
The present study aimed to compare the effects of self-care education through a smartphone app and lectures on the self-efficacy levels of patients with thalassemia. The present research was a novel study, since no smartphone app was designed for distance education of patients with thalassemia in previous studies, and the researchers found no similar study.The current study's findings disclosed that the smartphone app intervention group's self-efficacy increased greatly. Mobile health is embraced in this context as a potential player in managing non-communicable and chronic illnesses, even in low- and middle-income countries. This technology has a great potential for empowering patients, health workers, and health system managers. The tools can improve the performance of health workers by providing online guides, reminders, and referral services, and help care for patients via reminders and self-management. [In the study by JafarBeglu et al. in Iran, self-care training improved the self-efficacy of patients with diabetes. [In the study of Fookolaee [The patients in the smartphone app intervention group gained a greater improvement in self-efficacy than those in the lecture and control groups, according to the study's findings. Despite a minor rise in self-efficacy, lecture instruction had no discernible impact. Absoavaran et al. in a study disclosed that the smartphone intervention group using Bluetooth saw a substantial improvement in performance and attitude about breast self-examination in women compared to the lecture group. [Similar to the present research, Windisch et al. studied how the Covid-19 knowledge distribution approach for all medical staff at a big university hospital included the usage of the mobile health system. They suggested that mobile health may be a strategy to expand target audience access to trustworthy material, as well as a technique to disseminate time-sensitive medical knowledge. [One limitation of the present study was the narrow research population, which might affect the generalizability of the study results. An additional limitation was the possibility of sharing the app among the patients due to their relationship in the hospital and even the long-time friendship they already had. Moreover, the time of educational intervention and follow-up in the present study was short.