'They are inconveniencing us' - exploring how gaps in patient education and patient centred approaches interfere with TB treatment adherence: perspectives from patients and clinicians in the Free State Province, South Africa
Moodley, N., Saimen, A., Zakhura, N., Motau, D., Setswe, G., Charalambous, S., and Chetty-Makkan, C.M. (2020) 'They are inconveniencing us' - exploring how gaps in patient education and patient centred approaches interfere with TB treatment adherence: perspectives from patients and clinicians in the Free State Province, South Africa. BMC Public Health, 20. 454.
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Abstract
Background: Tuberculosis (TB) treatment loss to follow up (LTFU) plays an important contributory role to the staggering TB epidemic in South Africa. Reasons for treatment interruption are poorly understood. Treatment interruption appears to be the culmination of poor health literacy of patients and inadequate health education provided by clinicians. We explored clinician and patient perspectives of the gaps in TB messaging that influence TB treatment LTFU.
Methods: We conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews between January and May 2018 with a sample of 15 clinicians managing TB and 7 patients identified as LTFU in public clinics in the Free State Province, South Africa. Thematic analysis using a mixed deductive/inductive thematic approach was used.
Results: Limited occupational opportunities, fear of disclosure and stigmatization all contributed to treatment LTFU. Patients felt that the TB messaging received was inadequate. Many of the clinicians interviewed felt that improving patient's TB knowledge would reinforce adherence to treatment and thus focused on sharing information on treatment completion, side effects and infection control. However, the inability of clinicians to establish rapport with patients or to identify social support challenged TB treatment adherence by patients. Clinicians perceived this as patients not following their instructions despite what they considered lengthy TB education. Having said this, clinicians concurred that their medical management of TB lacked the psycho-social dimension to treat a social disease of this magnitude.
Conclusions: Limited occupational opportunities, fear of disclosure and stigmatization all contributed to treatment LTFU. Clinicians concurred that poor patient understanding of TB and that biomedical management lacking a psycho-social dimension further exacerbated the poor treatment outcome. TB remains a social disease, the successful management of which hinges on patient-centred care.
| Item ID: | 64214 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1471-2458 |
| Keywords: | Adherence; Health literacy; Knowledge; Loss to follow up; Messaging; Patient-centered care; Tuberculosis TB. |
| Copyright Information: | This 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/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://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. |
| Funders: | Free State Department of Health (DoH FS) |
| Projects and Grants: | DoH FS 81/2016/2017 |
| Date Deposited: | 01 Sep 2020 04:53 |
| FoR Codes: | 42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4203 Health services and systems > 420305 Health and community services @ 20% 42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4206 Public health > 420603 Health promotion @ 40% 42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4203 Health services and systems > 420307 Health counselling @ 40% |
| SEO Codes: | 92 HEALTH > 9204 Public Health (excl. Specific Population Health) > 920413 Social Structure and Health @ 50% 92 HEALTH > 9204 Public Health (excl. Specific Population Health) > 920401 Behaviour and Health @ 50% |
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