The Experience of Dysmenorrhea and Its Related Self-Care Behaviors Among Adolescent Girls

Purpose: To explore the experience and self-care behaviors among adolescent girls with dysmenorrhea in Hong Kong.

Methods: This study had two phases – a survey in phase I and semi-structured interviews in phase II. This abstract presents phase II of the study. Based on the phase I results, purposive sampling was employed to recruit 24 adolescent girls with very high and very low levels of self-care behaviors using the Adolescent Dysmenorrhic Self-Care Scale. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the help of an interview guideline to understand adolescent girls’ experience of dysmenorrhea and their self-care behaviors towards dysmenorrhea. All interviews were tape-recorded. Interview data were transcribed and analyzed using qualitative content analysis.

Results: Four categories were emerged: perceptions of dysmenorrhea, impact of dysmenorrhea, managing dysmenorrhea, and educational needs. The findings revealed that adolescent girls perceived dysmenorrhea as pain but normal. They experienced inability to concentrate on studies and change of family relationship during the painful days. Girls preferred to manage dysmenorrhea by lifestyle changes, seeking advice and endurance. Besides, girls also expressed their educational needs for dysmenorrhea self-care.

Conclusion: Understanding self-care behaviors towards dysmenorrhea from adolescent girls’ perspectives was important, as it could assist nurses in the development of culturally sensitive intervention to promote self-care behaviors of adolescent girls with dysmenorrhea.