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Empowering health volunteer’s through participatory action research in a comprehensive healthcare center

BACKGROUND: Health volunteers act as the link between the society and the healthcare system and are a symbol of people’s participation in the health maintenance and promotion. Despite the important role of health volunteers in the health system, it seems that they experience several problems. The ai...

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Autores principales: Vizeshfar, Fatemeh, Momennasab, Marzieh, Yektatalab, Shahrzad, Iman, Mohamad Taghi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8112012/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33971852
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10878-7
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author Vizeshfar, Fatemeh
Momennasab, Marzieh
Yektatalab, Shahrzad
Iman, Mohamad Taghi
author_facet Vizeshfar, Fatemeh
Momennasab, Marzieh
Yektatalab, Shahrzad
Iman, Mohamad Taghi
author_sort Vizeshfar, Fatemeh
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Health volunteers act as the link between the society and the healthcare system and are a symbol of people’s participation in the health maintenance and promotion. Despite the important role of health volunteers in the health system, it seems that they experience several problems. The aim of this study was empowering health volunteers through an action research. METHODS: This participatory action research was conducted through two continuous cycles of reflection and acting for change over 20 months, in a comprehensive health center in Southern of Fars province in Iran. Participants included 25 health volunteers; two instructors and an academic researcher as facilitator. In the first cycle the participants discovered the challenges of health volunteers, prioritized them, designed an action plan, and implemented it. At the end of this cycle, evaluation was done with the participants’ cooperation. The second cycle began with reflecting on the results of the first cycle and then after designing and implementing second action plan, final evaluation was done. RESULTS: Qualitative content analysis in the first phase led to the emergence of four categories, including role confusion, inadequate volunteer training, deficits in attracting and keeping volunteers, and being unfamiliar to the public. After the implementation of the action plan the participants learned through reflection and immersing in action. Finally, quantitative and qualitative data showed improvement of knowledge and performance, satisfaction, effectiveness of programs and improvement in volunteer’s competence. CONCLUSIONS: Clarification of volunteers’ roles, supporting volunteers to improve their knowledge and skills with coherent planning based on their educational needs, are appropriate management plans to attract and retain volunteers. By presenting their services to the society, they will be empowered and motivated to continue.
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spelling pubmed-81120122021-05-11 Empowering health volunteer’s through participatory action research in a comprehensive healthcare center Vizeshfar, Fatemeh Momennasab, Marzieh Yektatalab, Shahrzad Iman, Mohamad Taghi BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Health volunteers act as the link between the society and the healthcare system and are a symbol of people’s participation in the health maintenance and promotion. Despite the important role of health volunteers in the health system, it seems that they experience several problems. The aim of this study was empowering health volunteers through an action research. METHODS: This participatory action research was conducted through two continuous cycles of reflection and acting for change over 20 months, in a comprehensive health center in Southern of Fars province in Iran. Participants included 25 health volunteers; two instructors and an academic researcher as facilitator. In the first cycle the participants discovered the challenges of health volunteers, prioritized them, designed an action plan, and implemented it. At the end of this cycle, evaluation was done with the participants’ cooperation. The second cycle began with reflecting on the results of the first cycle and then after designing and implementing second action plan, final evaluation was done. RESULTS: Qualitative content analysis in the first phase led to the emergence of four categories, including role confusion, inadequate volunteer training, deficits in attracting and keeping volunteers, and being unfamiliar to the public. After the implementation of the action plan the participants learned through reflection and immersing in action. Finally, quantitative and qualitative data showed improvement of knowledge and performance, satisfaction, effectiveness of programs and improvement in volunteer’s competence. CONCLUSIONS: Clarification of volunteers’ roles, supporting volunteers to improve their knowledge and skills with coherent planning based on their educational needs, are appropriate management plans to attract and retain volunteers. By presenting their services to the society, they will be empowered and motivated to continue. BioMed Central 2021-05-10 /pmc/articles/PMC8112012/ /pubmed/33971852 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10878-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Vizeshfar, Fatemeh
Momennasab, Marzieh
Yektatalab, Shahrzad
Iman, Mohamad Taghi
Empowering health volunteer’s through participatory action research in a comprehensive healthcare center
title Empowering health volunteer’s through participatory action research in a comprehensive healthcare center
title_full Empowering health volunteer’s through participatory action research in a comprehensive healthcare center
title_fullStr Empowering health volunteer’s through participatory action research in a comprehensive healthcare center
title_full_unstemmed Empowering health volunteer’s through participatory action research in a comprehensive healthcare center
title_short Empowering health volunteer’s through participatory action research in a comprehensive healthcare center
title_sort empowering health volunteer’s through participatory action research in a comprehensive healthcare center
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8112012/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33971852
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10878-7
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