The development and testing of the Burden on Community Health Volunteers (BCHVs) instrument and the measurement of burden experienced by community health workers in Taiwan
Gau, Yueh-Mei (2011) The development and testing of the Burden on Community Health Volunteers (BCHVs) instrument and the measurement of burden experienced by community health workers in Taiwan. PhD thesis, James Cook University.
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Abstract
Background: The work of volunteers increases the service hours and range of services available at community health centres in Taiwan. Without these volunteers, many health promotion activities in Taiwan would cease to be available to people. While we know the government's resources are limited, the strength of the civilian community is enormous. Since the Taiwan Government funding for community health promotion diminished, some centres have not been able to continue to recruit volunteers, offer health promotion in the community, or integrate manpower and materials from the local community for the purpose of delivering health promotion to members of the community. Community health volunteers often face negative attitudes to their role from community members that lead to frustration. The volunteers may also be engaged in other forms of volunteering, which could lead to burden and result in attrition from the role. To date however there has been little empirical evidence regarding the burden experienced by community health volunteers in Taiwan and no instrument to measure the phenomenon.
Objectives: To develop and test a questionnaire to measure burden experienced by community health promotion development volunteers and to investigate the current burden experienced by this cohort of volunteers in an area of Taiwan.
Methods: A sequential mixed method exploratory design was chosen as the best way to conduct the study. The study incorporated the following three phases: initial development of a questionnaire, testing of the questionnaire, and surveying a large sample of volunteers using the developed questionnaire.
Results: The 20 item instrument designed to measure burden on community health promotion volunteers (the BCHVs) in Taiwan showed good internal consistency, content validity, and construct validity.
[The Burden on Community Health Volunteers (BCHVs) scale Questionnaire]
Using a stratified random sampling approach 435 participants in a region of Taiwan completed the final questionnaire in phase 3 of the project. The findings indicate that overall the burden experienced by the community health volunteers was low to medium. However, volunteers who undertook more hours, were responsible for greater numbers of clients, were without partners, and had poorer personal physical health experienced an increased level of burden.
Conclusions: Community nurses in Taiwan will be able to use the BCHVs instrument to assess the burden experienced by volunteers in the future. The identification of the factors associated with burden in the current sample will allow the government, nurses and those in leadership positions to develop strategies to help reduce the burden on these volunteers in the future. Further studies using the BCHVs across Taiwan will assist with the identification of the factors related to burden and provide evidence for the introduction of national strategies to reduce the current rates of attrition of volunteers in Taiwan. Given the role of volunteers in complementing the work of community nurses, this is an important study.
| Item ID: | 39330 |
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| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) |
| Keywords: | BCHV; Burden on Community Health Volunteers; burden; community health centers; community health centres; community nurses; health care; health promotion; health services; healthcare; nursing; Taiwan; volunteering; volunteers |
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| Copyright Information: | Copyright © 2011 Yueh-Mei Gau |
| Additional Information: | Publications arising from this thesis are available from the Related URLs field. The publications are: Chapters 2 & 5: Gau, Yueh-Mei, Buettner, Petra, Usher, Kim, and Stewart, Lee (2014) Development and validation of an instrument to measure the burden experienced by community health volunteers. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 23 (19-20). pp. 2740-2747. Chapter 4: Gau, Yueh-Mei, Usher, Kim, Stewart, Lee, and Buettner, Petra (2013) Burden experienced by community health volunteers in Taiwan: a qualitative study. International Journal of Nursing Practice, 19 (1). pp. 74-80. Chapter 6: Gau, Yueh-Mei, Buettner, Petra, Usher, Kim, and Stewart, Lee (2013) Burden experienced by community health volunteers in Taiwan: a survey. BMC Public Health, 13 (1). pp. 1-8. |
| Date Deposited: | 05 Aug 2015 23:57 |
| FoR Codes: | 11 MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES > 1110 Nursing > 111099 Nursing not elsewhere classified @ 100% |
| SEO Codes: | 92 HEALTH > 9202 Health and Support Services > 920299 Health and Support Services not elsewhere classified @ 100% |
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