Effectiveness of the program on knowledge enhancement and the ability to assess and refer stroke patients on knowledge, Skill, and Referral Stroke Fast Track service among Village Health Volunteer, Chaloem Phra Kiat Hospital

Abstract

A quasi-experimental one-group pre-post-test design was used to test the effectiveness of the program on knowledge enhancement and the ability to assess and refer stroke patients on knowledge, Skill, and referral stroke fast track service among village health volunteer, Chaloem Phra Kiat Hospital, Nakhon Si Thammarat Province. Purposive sampling was used to select 44 Village Health Volunteers using G*power version 3.2 based on inclusion criteria. The program consisted of knowledge enhancement and the ability to assess and refer stroke patients. The total activities were used for one day, about eight hours. Instruments and programs were validated by three experts. The reliability of the instruments was examined with twenty village health volunteers as the same sample size consisted of 1) the knowledge questionnaire was examined with Kuder-Richardson (KR-20) equal to 0.81 and 2) the skill to assess and refer stroke patients’ evaluation scale examined with interrater reliability equal to 0.80. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and the paired t-test.

The findings revealed that the samples had mean scores of the knowledge enhancement of stroke significantly higher than before intervention at a level of .05. Moreover, they had mean scores of skills to assess and refer stroke patients substantially higher than before intervention at a level of .01.

The results of this study increase the knowledge of stroke and the skills of village health volunteers in the initial screening and triage of stroke patients before transporting stroke patients from the community to the hospital.