Objective: We aimed to assess nurses' and doctor's attitude to patient education barriers in
Najran Armed Forces Hospital (NAFH).
Materials and methods: This is a cross-sectional study targeting health care professionals in NAFH. The
study was conducted during April 2015. The studied participants were all nurses and
doctors who work in NAFH. Anonymous self-administered questionnaires were used to
obtain information on sociodemographic background including age, gender, marital status
and professional category. The questionnaire collected data on attitudes to barriers
of participation in patient education. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze
the main qualitative and quantitative variables. Chi-square was used to compare percentages.
P-value < 0.05 was considered significant.
Results: A total of 128 nurses (n= 106) and doctors (n= 22) participated in the study. Most
of the participants (71.9%) were female. The mean age was 33.8±8.1 years with statistical
difference between males and females (36.2±8.8 years among males vs. 32.7 ±7.6 years
among females; p=0.03). Participants believed that shortness of time (68.8%), lack
of common language and culture for communication with patient (91.6%) and the lack
of patient's motivation for learning (85.7%) were the most important causes of insufficiency
of patient education.
Conclusion: the exploration of health professional attitudes concerning patient education issues
is an essential precursor to a debate about how barriers may be overcome, and about
the appropriate skill mix and employment arrangements required to manage health care
services in the future.
Key-words:
Patient education - attitude - health care professionals
