Effectiveness of a perimenopausal health education intervention for mid-life women in northern Taiwan (#MS03-21-LW).

The purpose of this quasi-experimental research was to assess the effectiveness of a perimenopausal health education intervention for mid-life women in northern Taiwan. The health education intervention included a health education brochure, one-on-one teaching. One hundred seventy-nine women were in the intervention group and 174 women were in the control group. Education effectiveness was assessed by participants' scores on four questionnaires at the beginning of the study and 3 months after initial recruitment. Both groups of women were compared on changes in their scores on health knowledge, level of perceived uncertainty, health behaviors and perceived perimenopausal disturbances. The intervention group had significantly reduced scores on perimenopausal disturbances (P < 0.005) and reported increase practice of healthy behaviors (P < 0.001) compared to the control group. However, a significant decrease of perceived uncertainty was only found in the subgroup of women recruited from the Chinese medicine clinic of the control group (t = 2.22; d.f. = 58; P < 0.05). Chinese medicine physicians assess patients based on a philosophical approach that treats all symptoms holistically. This may have helped reduce patient uncertainty. Copyright 2003 Elsevier Ireland Ltd.