ABSTRACT

              The purposes of this research were 1) to study concept and the method of caring for chronic illness patients following the medical current method and to study problem based method of caring chronic illness patients in Thai society, 2) to study concept and the method of caring chronic illness patients following Buddhist principles and 3) to propose a model of caring for chronic illness patients by Buddhism integrated that affects the quality of life and depression of the patient. Mixed methods research was used in this research by using quantitative method to extend qualitative results. Qualitative method was used to study concept and the method of chronic illness patients caring from Buddhist scripture and the medical current method. Experimental Research was used as a quantitative method and the sampling of this study was 18 to 70 years old people, who had attended the treatment at Makarak hospital, Kanchanaburi Province. Volunteering sampling was used and 100 patients who prefer to attend the program. The research instruments were Dhamma practice package, indicator form of World Health Organization in Thai version (WHOQOL-BREF–THAI), the Thai depression inventory. Content analysis was used for qualitative data and descriptive statistics and t-test using SPSS were used for quantitative analysis. The research results were found as follows.

              1) Chronic illness was the disease that has long term effect and increase level of effect because it was the defectiveness or had permanent changing to the patient’s body. Methods of caring chronic illness patients were to use medicine, alternative medicine, and having dietetic food. In Thai context, the methods of caring chronic illness patients were to develop health service system to encourage self-caring, to develop health behavior, to promote self-health care and to manage depression effect in chronic illness patients.

              2) For the concept and Buddhist method of caring chronic illness patients, many different methods were used and focus on making their body balance by using medical treatment, Dhamma treatment, meditation treatment, having dietetic food, exercise regularly, and behave in Dhamma action. These methods were able to control the illness effects.

              3) A model of caring chronic illness patients by using integrated Buddhism was consisted of C (Chanting), M (Meditation), D (Dhamma discussion), E (Eating), E (Exercise), E (Emotional control) and D (Daily life activity around the clock) and was called “CMDEEED”. This caring model was integrated by using Buddhist and medical current methods and was led by using Buddhist activities. The results of using the model indicated that experiment group and control group had shown significant difference in quality of life levels and experiment group had higher score than control group at 0.05 significant level. For the level of depression after experiment, the experiment group had shown decreasing of level of depression at 0.05 significant level.    

Download