Publications

Patient-centred care refers to the prevention, treatment of illness and the preservation of the physical and mentalwell-being of a patient through services offered by the health professional. The concept of patient-centred care hasreceived increased attention in medical practice. Knowledge about what patient-centred care is amongundergraduate health practitioners and their attitudes towards caring for patients is important for patient outcomesin the future. This study is therefore aiming at assessing the knowledge and attitudes towards patient-centred careamong undergraduate health care students in KIU-WC. This study employed a prospective cross-sectional design.A properly constructed and validated questionnaire was used to collect the information. The questionnaire has intothree sections; Section A captured the demographic data of the undergraduate students, Section B captured theknowledge of these undergraduate students about patient-centered care and Section C captured the attitudes thatthese undergraduate students have towards providing patient-centered Care. Based on the results of the study, themajority 251(50.2%) of the respondents had good knowledge about patient care. Half 250 (50.0%) of the respondentshad a good attitude and half 250(50.0%). Studies showed a having good knowledge is significantly (P=0.000)associated with students’ having a good attitude towards patient care. There was no significant relationship betweenstudents’ level of knowledge and gender (P=0.938), marital status (P=0.100), nationality (P=0.512) and course ofstudy (P=0.256), while age (P=0.019), religion (P=0.008), year of study (P=0.000) and medical experience/industrial training (P=0.049) significantly affected students’ level of knowledge. From the study, males had poorattitudes towards patient care (P=0.002). Respondents between the age of 16-25 years (P=0.404) had poor attitudes.Respondents who were single (P=0.207) had a good attitude. Pharmacy students had the highest knowledge75(54.3%) compared to medicine 99(51.6%) and nursing 77(45.3%), but this did not translate to the best attitude asmedical students had the highest attitude grade of 109(56.8%) and it was a significant difference (P=0.256).Conclusion Our study has shown that as high as half of the students have both poor knowledge and attitude towardspatient care services. This calls for a clarion review of their curriculum to enhance theory and practice towardspatient care practices.