Nurses' and doctor's attitude to patient education barriers in Najran armed forces Hospital, Saudi Arabia

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

Publication History

Received: 16 November 2015

Accepted: 15 February 2016

Article published online:
07 July 2022