Background: Quality of Life (QOL) has emerged as an important parameter for evaluating the quality of health care for patients with renal failure. The literature suggests that religious beliefs of dialysis patients impacts on their QOL. But, nothing was found in the literature with regards to Islam as a religion and Arab as ethnicity and QOL in dialysis patients. This research will examine the cultural relevancy of two quality of life tools for dialysis patients in UAE.
Method: Co-relational survey design was used to study the QOL in UAE dialysis patients. Ethics approval for this study has been granted from Victoria University of Wellington Ethics Committee and Sheikh Khalifa Medical City research committee. 150 dialysis patients completed the QOL Index and the SF 36 questionnaires, and questions on demographic and clinical data.
Results: The overall QOL was rated higher when self-assessed using the QOL Index compared to SF 36 tool (77.2 vs 58.90). Multiple regression analysis indicated that presence of chronic health problem was the only significant predictor variable in explaining the total scores of both tools. Furthermore, some variables that had a significant influence on the tools in the correlation, using t-test and ANOVA were no longer significant in the multiple regressions such as ethnicity and living arrangement.
Conclusion: The influences of QOL in UAE population are different from dialysis patients in western countries. This is the first study done on UAE dialysis patients. More studies are required to uncover the concept of QOL in the Arab dialysis population.