Effectiveness of Participatory Learning Program on Knowledge and Practice of Village Health Volunteers for Taking Care of Hypertension Patients

Abstract

This quasi-experimental study with one group pretest-posttest design aimed to investigate the effectiveness of the participatory learning program on the knowledge and practice of village health volunteers in caring for hypertensive patients. A sample of 35 volunteer health workers from villages in Bang Sai sub-district, Maung district, Chonburi province was recruited through simple random sampling. The research instrument included the participatory learning program developed by the researchers based on Kolb's learning model, demographic data, hypertension knowledge test, and hypertension health practice questionnaire. The reliabilities of the knowledge test and health practice questionnaire were .72 and .88 respectively. Data were collected before and after 8 weeks of participation in the participatory learning program and analyzed by paired t-test comparisons. The results showed that village health volunteers had a high level of knowledge about hypertension after participating in the program (=19.51, SD =.70) and their practice of health care for hypertension was at a high level ( =2.52, SD =.26). The knowledge and practice of health care for hypertension patients of village volunteers were statistically higher after participating in the program than before participating in the program at .01 (t=9.45, df=34 and t=8.75, df=34, respectively).