An Investigation of the Effect of Retraining Courses on the Knowledge, Attitude, and Performance of Health Workers in the Field of Malaria

Abstract

Introduction and Objective: Malaria is considered one of the most important parasitic diseases in Iran. With regard to malaria, Sistan and Baluchestan province ranks first among the country's provinces. This study set out in 2017 to investigate the impact of education on malaria knowledge, attitude and behavior among health workers working in Saravan city health center. Materials and Methods: The present study is a semi-experimental study of before and after clinical trial type that was performed on 73 health workers in Saravan city. A researcher-made questionnaire was used to collect the required data. It consisted of two parts: the first part was dedicated to demographic data and the second part was about the knowledge, attitude and performance of health workers regarding malaria. The face and content validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by an expert panel. The reliability of the questionnaire was calculated using Cronbach's alpha coefficient (α=0.85). Before the start of the training, the questionnaires were given to the health workers. The trainings were presented in 49 one-hour sessions by the experts of the headquarters of Saravan Health Center in Behvarzi Center using lectures and pamphlets. One month after the training, the same questionnaires were filled in by health workers. The difference between the variables of knowledge, attitude and performance in the two groups before and after the intervention was performed using a one-sample and paired sample t-test or their non-parametric equivalent i.e. Binominal and Wilcoxon tests in the SPSS software (version 18). A significance level of 0.5 was taken into consideration. Results: The results showed that the mean scores of health workers in the areas of knowledge, attitude and performance increased significantly after the workshop (p=0.001) so that the participants' knowledge score increased from 26.06 to 56.7. In terms of attitude, their score increased from 7.2 to 17.7, and in terms of performance, participants' score increased from 13 to 32. Discussion and Conclusions: The findings revealed that the implementation of educational programs in the field of malaria can increase the level of knowledge, attitude and performance of the community regarding the preventive behaviors of malaria. Therefore, health system officials are recommended to work toward the amelioration of the knowledge, attitude and performance of the health workers. Keywords: knowledge, attitude, performance, health workers, malaria, retrainin