Healthcare-Seeking Behavior among Tuberculosis Patients during the Covid-19 Pandemic in Padang City

Abstract

Pulmonary TB has symptoms similar to covid-19 and also the easy way of spreading causes people to be reluctant to go to health services for fear of contracting or being diagnosed with covid-19. This has caused the number of case discoveries and the success of TB treatment to decrease. This study aims to determine the behavioral picture of health care search in pulmonary TB patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study is a cross-sectional study conducted on 100 pulmonary TB patients in Padang City aged more than 17 years, who are or have completed treatment at the Puskesmas Anak Air and Lubuk Buaya in January-June 2022 which were randomly selected. Data were collected through a modified questionnaire of healthcare-seeking behavior on pulmonary TB patients. The results showed that most respondents first visited public health services (51%), especially Puskesmas (52.9%), because they believed that pulmonary TB could be cured (62.7) and wanted to get health services from health workers (56.9%). However, there are still people who do not visit health services for the first time (49%) for fear of being diagnosed (55.1%) or contracting covid-19 (46.9%). For this reason, as nurses, we must continue to actively educate the public so that public knowledge about pulmonary TB and covid-19 increases and there is no negative perception of disease or anxiety in the community.