Development of a Manual for Village Health Volunteers in the Prevention of Osteoarthritis among Older Persons, Phonthong Sub-district, Chaiyaphum Province

Abstract

This research was a research and development study. The purposes of the study were to develop a manual for village health volunteers in the prevention of Osteoarthritis for the elderly, Phonthong  Sub-district, Chaiyaphum Province. The study was conducted from August 2020 to February 2021. The study was divided into 2 phases. The first phase was to study the circumstances and develop the manual, collecting data through semi-structured in-depth interviews and focus groups among key informants such as public health officers, village health volunteers, and the elderly for 23 persons, analyzing data by content analysis technique. The second phase was the trial and evaluation of the use of the manual. The samples were 148 village health volunteers. The questionnaire was used to collect data its reliability was 0.83. The statistics used to analyze data were frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation.

The results of the development of the manual for village health volunteers in the prevention of Osteoarthritis for the elderly, Phonthong Sub-district, Chaiyaphum Province found that the village health volunteers needed to improve knowledge of knee osteoarthritis, preventing skills of knee osteoarthritis, and the basic skills of screening and assessment the severity of the disease to give the appropriate advice and referral. The contents of the manual composed of the direction of using the manual, the objectives of the manual, and contents of the manual (the situation of knee osteoarthritis in aging, the definition of Osteoarthritis, the causes and factors of Osteoarthritis, the symptoms of Osteoarthritis, the diagnosis and treatment of Osteoarthritis, the preventions of Osteoarthritis, and the screening of Osteoarthritis and referral).     

There was training on using the manual to enhance the efficacy of village health volunteers in Phonthong Sub-district. After 4 weeks of the training, the evaluation of using the manual found that the overview of the manual had appropriateness at a high level (M = 4.02, SD = 0.09) with easy to read, understandable contents, and following up to practice correctly. Afterward, the manual was edited and developed to be used in the real application.