The Practice of Patient Education by Attending Physicians in Southwest Nigeria

Abstract

Background: The value of patient education involves an improved understanding of their medical conditions, diagnosis, disease, or disability. However, the challenge of educating patients is multi-faceted, considering the complexity of many diseases, limited health literacy and a limited number of available doctors to tend to the long awaiting patient queue. Objective: This study aimed to assess the practice of patients’ education of their illnesses by the treating physician in different practice settings, specialties, contact, duration of admission, the eventuality of death and post-mortem. Method: The study was a cross-sectional descriptive design conducted among 449 medical doctors. A self-administered semi-structured pretested questionnaire was administered to all cadres of physicians in four health centres selected randomly in the southwest, Nigeria. The data collected were analysed using SPSS version 25 and results were presented in descriptive statistics and inferential statistics with the level of significance set at p = < 0.05. Result: The majority (57.0%) of the respondents were within the age range of 25-40. The highest respondent cadres were registrars and medical officers 224 (49.9%). Of the total participants, 140 reported seeing over 40 patients per week. It was observed that 95.9% did explain to the patients the impressions of their symptoms at first contact. However, the percentage of respondents reduced markedly when giving the next appointment, 58.8%. Also, 86.6% always explain the need for hospital admission, 76.4% explained options of surgery while only 28.3% discussed mistakes/complications from the procedures. Conclusion: There were a lot of gaps in the patient’s understanding of their illnesses as imparted by the attending physicians. The gap increases after the first contact both in knowledge and understanding on the part of the patient which may be one of the major factors responsible for poor compliance and cooperation on the part of the patient which ultimately hinders the optimum delivery of effective and efficient health care. This in effect affects the overall health status of the community and society.