|
pubmed:otherAbstract |
PIP: On 2 atolls of the Republic of the Maldives before mid-1988, health workers visited the homes of 200 mothers with children under 3 years old to determine their knowledge about various aspects of primary health care (PHC) (prenatal care, family planning, diarrhea, immunization, use of growth cards in growth monitoring, and communicable diseases control). Between June 1988 and July 1989, health workers went from house to house on Laamu Atoll to educate the mothers individually about these various aspects of PHC (control group). At the same time, other health workers taught groups of 5 - 6 mothers about PHC on Thaa Atoll (experimental group). Researchers wanted to learn whether the group approach would allow mothers to gain more knowledge than the individual approach. Women in the experimental group gained significantly more knowledge than did those in the control group. The scores increased at least 2-fold for each variable in the experimental group while those for the control group basically did not change. For example, the mean score for knowledge of pregnancy risk factors rose from 0.26 to 3.75 for the experimental group, but, in the control group, it was 0.4 and 0.47. These results indicated that the group approach is effective in teaching mothers in the community about PHC and has the potential to achieve acceptance and adoption of healthy behavior by mothers.
|
