Introduction: Diabetes is a chronic illness which needs specific self care behaviors to the end of life. On the other hand, studies have shown that improvement in knowledge and practice of diabetic patients brings about improvement of metabolic status for which self care education specially with active method (active involvement of diabetic patients) is necessary. So, this study has been conducted to determine the effect of self care program with group discussion on knowledge and practice of diabetic adolescent girls referring to Iranian Diabetes Society. Methods: This research is a quasi experimental study conducted on 80 diabetic adolescent girls aged 15-19 (40 as experiment and 40 as control group) in Iranian Diabetes Society in 2008-2009. Self care program was designed after data had been collected in pre intervention stage by questionnaires of knowledge and practice as well as educational needs assessment in both groups, and then, self care program was administrated through 8 discussion sessions for experiment group. Finally, the same questionnaires were completed for experiment and control groups of diabetic adolescent girls once just after and one month after intervention again. The collected data were analyzed through SPSS 15 with statistical tests of X2, Independent Sample T test, Repeated Measures and Paired T test. Results: Results showed no significant differences between experiment and control groups in demographic characteristics(age, height, weight, father’s job etc.) through Independent Sample T test and X2 .In experiment group, there was a significant increase in scores of knowledge and practice compared to before, just after and one month after intervention (p<0.0001) .But this difference was not significant in control group (P>0.05) and Independent T-test showed no significant difference in knowledge and practice between experiment and control groups before intervention(p>0.05). There was a significant difference in mean scores of knowledge and practice just after and one month after intervention between two groups of experiment and control shown by Independent T-test (p<0.05). Conclusion: Generally ,the results showed that performing self care program by group discussion was effective on increasing knowledge and practice of diabetic adolescent girls and it is suggested to handle teaching self care behavior program by group discussion as an effective method to improve knowledge and practice in other adolescents with chronic diseases

Keywords: Diabetes, adolescent girls, self care program, group discussion, knowledge, practice

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