The Development of Health Volunteers’ Competency for Tuberculosis Screening in Community in Nam Pat District, Uttaradit Province

Abstract

Tuberculosis was high prevalence in Nampat district, Uttaradit  also it was considered as an important public health issue. It was needed to proactive action plan because the number of tuberculosis   discovered was lower than the target.  All of our patients received the treatment delayed.  This research aimed to development of health volunteers’ competency for tuberculosis screening in Community in Nam Pat District, Uttaradit Province.  The participants in this study were a group of health volunteer in village. The number of 175 participants in Ban Fai sub-district, NumPad  district. The participatory action research was divided into 3 phases; phase 1 study: situation study of knowledge and practice of public health volunteers. Phase 2:  development of public health volunteers’ competency.  Phase 3:  evaluation of development potential of public health volunteers.  Data was analyzes by descriptive  statistics and comparing  the difference between before and after development of health volunteers’ competency with dependent T – test statistics. The result of study show that the problem was detected in the Tuberculosis screening was not covered by the public health volunteers. They had a misunderstanding about the tuberculosis.  For the develop public health volunteers were consisted of workshop on awareness, prevention Tuberculosis screening and disease control and proactive plan  and support section,  The difference between before and after development of health volunteers’ competency with dependent T – test statistics showed  that after the development of a public health volunteer with score on knowledge of tuberculosis (t = 7.780, P < 0.001) with the score on knowledge of tuberculosis screening (t =9.028, P <0.001) and practical skills were better  than  Tuberculosis screening (t = 27.439, P < 0.001). The recommendations  from this research were that the model should lead to enhance potential of health volunteers in health screening tuberculosis in the community expands to other areas in order to have the results of the screening of tuberculosis, increasing coverage. The research study should study  in effect of development issues that remain in the long term, in order to evaluate the sustainability of the development, because this research is immediately after the measurement operation.