Background: Hand washing is the most effective method of preventing the transmission of diseases through hands.Objective: To identify relationships between gender, availability of hand washing facilities, perception of barriers toward hand washing compliance and subjective norm in implementing hand washing practice among students of public elementary school in Belitung district, Indonesia.Method: A cross-sectional research study was used in this study. Of 309 participants were recruited in 11 public elementary schools from 3 sub districts that has been implemented the hand washing program in Belitung, Indonesia. Purposive sampling method was used to select the participants. This study was used a self-administered questionnaire with minimal interference in order to minimize bias and by emphasizing to the students that this is not an examination.Results: The results showed that 71.8% of the students were not hand washing properly. It also showed that availability of hand washing facilities and gender were not related with hand washing behavior. In regards of barrier perception toward hand washing compliance also showed that was not related to hand washing practice among elementary schools students. However, subjective norm (c² =4.459, p < .05) was related to hand washing practice among elementary schools students.Conclusion: Subjective norm has a significant relationship to hand washing behavior. Thus health care provider could develop specific intervention programs based on TPB to promote subjective norm among elementary schools students since this norm or perception of norm can motivate hand washing behavior among elementary schools students effectively.

Background: The Government of Indonesia has provided a Chronic Disease Management Program, better known as PROLANIS, to reduce the incidence of hypertension; however, the prevalence of hypertension remains high in the community, especially in Belitung, Indonesia, which warrants further investigation. One of the strategies to decrease the number of hypertensions is by addressing barriers and challenges in hypertension management according to patients’ points of view, which has become a lack of focus in previous studies.Purpose: This study aimed to explore the barriers and challenges of patients in managing hypertension in Belitung, Indonesia.Methods: This research employed a qualitative descriptive study design with 20 hypertensive patients who had access to the PROLANIS program in public health centers. Focus group discussions were conducted for data collection. The content analysis was used for data analysis.Results: Six themes were developed from the data, including (1) Dietary habits: the role of salt, (2) Nonadherence to medication due to the use of traditional medicine, (3) Shopping habit on nonprescription medication, (4) Confusion of anti-hypertensive drugs, (5) Barriers to physical exercise, and (6) Health monitoring and education.Conclusion: This study serves as an input for nurses and healthcare providers to improve the PROLANIS program, especially in hypertension management, as well as to develop new nursing interventions according to the barriers and challenges.

Many Indonesian nurses face uncertain placement owing to the low absorptive capacity of the public and private sector health facilities, which may influence new students to choose nursing as a career. Thus, determining students’ reasons for choosing to study nursing remains important to help nursing educators develop programmes to retain them in the nursing profession. This study aimed to determine why new students choose to enter the nursing profession. This was a phenomenological study using focus group discussions with twenty nursing diploma students who were selected to participate in this study at the beginning of their first year of study. Van Manen’s thematic analysis method was used for the data analysis. The findings revealed five themes associated with the reasons to study nursing among Indonesian students, namely (i) conscience to help family and others, (ii) inspiration by nurses, (iii) desire to improve the nursing image, (iv) parental and family influence, and (v) opportunities to work and study abroad. These findings help nursing educators to further understand what drives students, which can be used to improve retention strategies for upcoming and future nursing generations in Indonesia.