Health belief and operational models are important in contextualizing enablers and barriers to a given health care process or health intervention in a specific or diverse setting. The purpose of the study is to appraise attitude and perception of significant others (care givers) in the care and follow up of hypertensive patients in Fako Division in the Southwest Region of Cameroon. Concerning the theoretical scope, the study was guided by The Health Belief Model (HBM), The Theory of Human caring and the Theory of Health Promotion Model. It was a hospital-based cross-sectional study that employed a concurrent nested mixed-method in a survey design whereby quantitative and qualitative approaches were used to collect data on different but complementary indicators. All care givers in the study setting were targeted conveniently. Two hospitals were randomly selected; one public and one faith based from among all the hospitals in the 4 main subdivisions of Fako, making a total of 8 hospitals of secondary and or tertiary levels of health facilities. Altogether, 77 significant others were effectively involved in the study. Data were collected using a semi-structured questionnaire. An application to carry out the research was sent to the ethical review board of the University of Bamenda. Upon approval, Data were collected while abiding to the necessary ethical requirements. Data were digitalized with the support of EpiData version 3.1, and analyzed descriptively and inferentially using SPSS 21.0. The findings unfold that a weak majority (55.8%) of caregivers had a negative perception about their caring of their hypertensive patients, thus implying that caring for the hypertensive patients was relatively challenging. Age and category of health facility surfaced as significant predictors of care givers perception of care as a care giver (P<0.05) while age was a critical one (P<0.05; OR > 1 and LB of OR > 1). Positive perception increased with age while those of the public health facilities were significantly more positive. Care givers in their strong majority were positive about care from the nurses with a proportion weight of 70.9% and this trend was supported by the qualitative induction. Care givers perception of care from nurses was only significantly dependent of category of health facility (P=0.000), whereby those from public health facilities had significantly more positive perceptions (88.2%) as compared to those from their private counterpart (45.2%). It was recommended psycho-social counseling, awareness and training to enhance the effectiveness of care givers in the care of hypertensive patients.
Hypertension, Patients, Care, Follow-up, Model
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