Med Surg Nurs J. 2019 May; 8(2):e92686. Published online 2019 May 25. doi: 10.5812/msnj.92686. Research Article Effect of Peer Education on the Resilience of Mothers of Children with Leukemia: A Clinical Trial Azam Jamali 1 , Fereshteh Ghaljaei 2, * , Asadollah Keikhaei 3 and Alie Jalalodini 4 1 Nursing and Midwifery College, Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, Iran 2 Pediatric Department, Community Nursing Research Center, Nursing and Midwifery College, Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, Iran 3 Anesthesia Department Paramedical School, Zahedan University of Medical Sciences and Health Services, Zahedan, Iran 4 Department of Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, Zahedan, Iran * Corresponding author: Pediatric Department, Community Nursing Research Center, Nursing and Midwifery College, Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, Iran. Email: fereshteh.ghaljaei@gmail.com Received 2019 April 29; Accepted 2019 May 11. Abstract Background: Resilience has become a basic construct in theories and studies of welfare and mental health. The mother is the one most involved emotionally in the child’s cancer and its treatment and hence, she requires the most degree of resilience. Therefore, it is crucial to deploy effective methods to enhance the resilience of mothers. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of peer education on the resilience of mothers of children with leukemia. Methods: This clinical trial was performed on 74 mothers of children with leukemia who had been hospitalized in the hematology ward of Ali ibn Abi Talib Hospital in Zahedan in 2017. Convenience sampling was used to recruit the participants in accordance with the inclusion criteria. The subjects were randomly assigned to the control and experimental groups. Peer group training was then conducted for the experimental group for five days. The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) was completed for both groups before and immediately after the intervention, as well as two months later. The data were then analyzed using the chi-square test (Fisher’s exact test), independent t-test, repeated measures ANOVA, and Bonferroni post hoc test at the significance level of P < 0.05. Results: The results showed that the mean total score of resilience and its subscales did not make a significant difference between the control and experimental groups immediately after the intervention (P > 0.05). Meanwhile, two months post-intervention, a significant difference was observed in this regard between the control and experimental groups, with the latter featuring a higher mean score (P < 0.001). Besides, the results suggested a significant increase in the total score of resilience and all its subscales over time in the experimental group (P < 0.001). Conclusions: Peer education could be implemented as an inexpensive easy method to improve the resilience of mothers of children with leukemia. Keywords: Peer Education, Resilience, Children, Mothers, Leukemia 1. Background Cancer is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide in the general population, including children (1, 2). In childhood, cancer includes a set of benign and malignant tumors caused by disorders in the process of cellular development (3). The term ‘childhood cancer’ refers to cancer cases diagnosed in people under the age of 15 years (4). Among all types of cancer, leukemia is the most com- mon childhood cancer in the world (5). Approximately, 160,000 new cases of cancer and 90,000 child deaths oc- cur every year globally (2). In Iran, evidence suggests that it accounts for the death of about 4% of children under the age of five and 13% of children aged 5 to 15 years. According to the Iranian Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Society (IPHOS), 80% of children with cancer are fully recovered, and their certain recovery could reach 95% if they would receive timely treatment (6). Following the diagnosis of cancer in children, many psychological, social, and financial problems overwhelm the parents (7). Research has shown that having a child with cancer can disturb the emotional state of parents and interfere with their marital relationship, leading to changes in parental roles and creating tension among the members of the family (8). In this situation, different levels of anxiety, shock, depression, disappointment, and denial affect the parents, especially in the early stages of cancer Copyright © 2019, Medical - Surgical Nursing Journal. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits copy and redistribute the material just in noncommercial usages, provided the original work is properly cited.