Evaluation of health education sessions

الملخص EN

Objective: Health education is a necessary component of any health service that seeks to promote and improve the health of its population.

Evaluation is an essential component of a good health education program.

This study aims to evaluate the health education sessions conducted on group of subjects attending a primary health care center, and describe the methods used in these sessions.

Design: Cross section study.

Setting: The study was carried out at King Faisal University primary health care center, AI-Khobar, Saudi Arabia during the year 1999.

Method: Health education sessions are conducted twice per week throughout the year.

Total of 104 sessions, 56 were selected randomly for evaluation.

The sessions were evaluated with a structured checklist.

Each item of assessment was graded as "good" or "poor" according to the speaker's performance during the session.

Data were entered into a personal computer, incorporating the Statistical Package for Social Sciences Version 7.0.

Results: The total number of health education sessions delivered by a medical team composed of 11 residents, 38 interns, and 6 nurses, was 56.

Significantly more residents, than interns and nurses, delivered topics of high priority to their audience during the sessions (P < 0.04).

However, significantly more interns used incentives during their delivery (P < 0.03).

There was significantly less audience participation with interns than that observed for residents than residents, or nurses (P < 0.04).

Cross- tabulation of audience participation by topic showed that significantly more subjects who were knowledgeable of the topic exhibited audience participation (78.3 %) than those who were not aware (P < 0.02).

In 39 (75 %) of the sessions, there was good participation of the audience.

Participation was good in 32 (72.7 %) when the subjects discussed were directed to the right target group.