Need For Health Education Programs: The Health Care Workers Insight

Abstract

Background:

Sophisticated health education is now become a prime requirement to bring improvements in health profiles of patients and their families. Health care activities play a significant role to keep health education at forefront. The aim of the present study isto determine the health care workers’ perception for the need of instituting health promotion and also identify their beliefs about the improvement of community health by conducting health literacy sessions.

Methods:

A cross sectional study was conducted from April to October 2016 in various districts of Karachi. A total 286 medical care providers including physicians, pharmacists, nurses, dispensers/compounders, academicians and medical officers/quacks belonging to different organizations/institutions were approached.A structured questionnaire was developed containing different close ended items, seems to be necessary to meet objective of the study.

Results:

About 82.42% of them felt the need of health promotion services owing to their belief that such counseling would be beneficial in maintaining better health status of population. The lack of information was seen regarding drug-drug (24.12%) and food-drug interactions (25.87%). The most common issue, addressed by health care providers (68.53%) was the improvement in physical fitness via life style modification. The healthcare providers utilized various ways for spreading of information; however the role of media was highly encouraged by them.

Conclusion:

Institution of health education programs for residents is indeed necessary to reduce the risks of many communicable and non-communicable diseases.Therefore, such activities should be planned on regular basisin various areas of the city to provide maximum opportunitiesto individuals for participation. Health counseling also played a vital role and considered to be beneficial in the development of healthy community/society.