Health is Wealth Fellow 4TH BI-WEEKLY BLOGPOST
The data collected and collated were analyzed during this period (weeks 7 and 8 of the project).
181 respondents were chosen by simple randomly sampling from all the members of the Association of resident doctors in Federal Teaching Hospital Ido-Ekiti, Nigeria.
Respondents were informed of the purpose of the project and the confidentiality of their answers were guaranteed.
Two important milestones we wanted to achieve were;
- To create awareness amongst junior doctors about physical activity and to make them to start recording the physical activity levels of their patients as part of “vital signs” being recorded for every patient ( www.ahip.org/Kaiser-Permanente-Making-Exercise-a-Vital-Sign.aspx )
- To pilot the use of mobile airtime as incentives in mobile health amongst busy professionals to drive up response rates. (www.ictworks.org/2014/11/21/want-people-to-answer-your-mobile-survey-pay-them/ ).
What did we find?
77 out of 181 respondents replied to our pre-intervention questions (42.54% response rate)
A whooping 104 did not respond (57.46% non response rate)
From the Key informant interviews carried out among some of the respondents, a lack of interest in the project was a major reason for the high non-response.
4 questions were asked:
Do you know how to assess the daily physical activity level of your patients?
53 said yes (68.83%)
Do you routinely assess patients level of physical activity?
14 said yes (18.18%).
63 said No (81.82%)
*Please note* 81.82% do not routinely carry out this measure
Do you record your patients responses to your questions on physical activity in their case notes?
11 said yes (14.29%)
64 said No (83.12%).
A great majority 83.12% do not carry out this important process
2 did not answer the question (0.03%)
Do you routinely counsel your patients on the benefits of being physically active?
56 said yes (72.73%)
21 said No (27.27%)
With this result, it was clear we were going to encounter an almost insurmountable wall to changing this mindset with a 28-day intervention via daily sms texts of the importance, benefits and why doctors should promote physical activity as well as record patients physical activity status as a “vital sign”.
Responses to post-intervention questions were almost non-existent. But from the few, who responded, question 2 and 3 were still a NO.
Further studies definitely need to be carried out on why and how this is the case. Though I have my suspicions, I leave it to the report writing stage of the project.
See you guys in 2 weeks.
“Health is wealth and it is worth fighting for”
Yours
Damilola