HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS’ KNOWLEDGE ON HOME HEALTH CARE IN AL-KHOBAR AND AL-DAMMAM

OBJECTIVE: To survey self-reported knowledge of home health care (HHC) services of health care professionals in Al-Khobar and Al-Dammam. METHODS: A specially developed questionnaire was used to conduct a cross-sectional study to find out how knowledgeable 11 hospital administrators, 16 PHHC medical directors, and 637 health care team were of HHC services. RESULTS: When asked whether they knew of HHC services, 90.9% of medical directors, 62.5% of primary health care center directors, 83.1% of physicians, 92.9% of nurses, 98.6% of physiotherapists, 95.9% of social workers, and 57.6% of the health team members replied that they did, although this knowledge was very scanty. Health care workers’ source of information on HHC services was hospital work (65.0%) while administrators’ sources were journals (65.0%). Only 11.1% of the administrators and 30.3% of the health team members indicated having had HHC training from university, and 3.7% of administrators and 20.4% of health team members indicated having attended a HHC lecture or symposium. The only finding with significant difference of responses (p<0.001) was on the knowledge of HHC services among health care professionals. All other responses showed no significant differences between them. No significant differences in the responses were found between the two groups of administrators. CONCLUSIONS: Health professionals and administrators showed little knowledge of HHC services. The main source of HHC information for health professionals was from their hospital experience while administrators learned more about HHC services from medical journals. RECOMMENDATIONS: HHC training centers must be set up in Saudi Arabia. Home health care concepts and skills should be part of the regular health science undergraduate curriculum.