NURSES' EXPERIENCES OF FAMILY PROBLEMS CAUSED BY PREMENSTRUAL SYNDROME: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY

Premenstrual syndrome can cause problems for the individual patients in family
and community like reduction in the level of performance at home and job, educational failure, family
problems and conflicts, conflicts with their spouse, violence against children, absenteeism in the
workplace, and in some severe cases, committing a crime and even suicide .
Materials & Methods: A qualitative design of interpretative phenomenological analysis with qualitative
content analysis approach by deep, semi structured interviews were carried out on 21 married Iranian
nurses with PMS working in different wards of hospitals in Urmia, Iran. The participants were selected
purposefully. Interviews were conducted by tape recording with the permission of the interviewee. The
transcribed data were subjected to qualitative analysis during the research process, the study applied
purposive sampling, and the data were analyzed by the methods developed by Colaizzi method. The
criteria of acceptability, verifiability, trustworthiness and transmissibility were used to evaluate the
accuracy, validity and reliability of the data. The participants’ experiences were categorized into four
themes.
The main themes were “disturbance in marriage process, perceived threats caused by problems at work
and life, seeking for spiritual and humanitarian support and getting strategies to deal with problems'.
Results: The participants’ experiences were categorized into four themes and 14 subthemes. The main
themes were: “Disruption of family life, the perceived threat posed by problems at work and life, seeking
for spiritual and humanitarian support, and strategies to deal with problems caused by premenstrual
syndrome.
Conclusion: Premenstrual syndrome requires women health organizations’ and reproduction hygiene
specialists’ adequate attention. It seems necessary to work on cultural points, and planning in families,
among couples in counseling centers, in order to reach a better understanding of symptoms of
premenstrual