Original Research Article
Year: 2020 | Month: September | Volume: 10 | Issue: 9 | Pages: 134-137
Knowledge of Prospective Community Health Officers Regarding Primary Health Care in a Designated IGNOU Centre in Sub Himalayan Region
Aditya Sood1, Raj Kumar2, Anjali Sharma3, Rahul Gupta1
1MD Community Medicine, District Programme Officer, Health and Family Welfare, Himachal Pradesh
2MS General Surgery, Civil Hospital Baijnath, Himachal Pradesh
3Resident Doctor, Department of Microbiology, DRPGMC Kangra at Tanda, Himachal Pradesh
Corresponding Author: Raj Kumar
ABSTRACT
Primary health care (PHC) is considered as a whole-of-society approach to health and well-being of individuals, families and communities based on their needs and preferences. We tried to ascertain their baseline knowledge towards primary health care approach in health care delivery system. Observations from this study may help the training providers to remodel their approach accordingly and may also help in monitoring their progress after the completion of course. A cross sectional study was done in Zonal Hospital Dharamshala, which is IGNOU accredited institute for Bridge Program in Community in Himachal Pradesh. All the willing students who were enrolled for the bridge course were included in study. A semi-structured, self administered proforma was designed which is loosely inspired from Primary Health Care Questionnaire (PHCQ). A total of 60 participants were enrolled in the study. The mean age of the study participants was 28.5 years (Standard Deviation= 7.2 years). The range of age was 22 years to 34 years. Mean knowledge score (as calculated in the scale of 0-100) was found to be 52.8 with Standard deviation of 11.4. Mean knowledge score among younger aspirants (20-25 Years) was observed to be statistically higher than the participants of the rest of the age groups (p-value 0.02). There is still a lot of scope for the improvement in their knowledge specially in understanding some of the complex elements of primary health care like role in palliative or rehabilitation health care, decentralization of health services and synergistic role of mid level workers and health professionals.
Key words: primary health care, community health officer, north india