Impact Of Community Health Workers On Care And Management Of Elderly Condition

The study was aimed to assess the impact of community health workers on care and management of elderly condition. The study adopted a descriptive cross-sectional descriptive design. The population of the study was 205 community health workers. The instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire. The study revealed that 95% of the health workers had good knowledge of care of the elderly patients. Majority of the health workers had positive attitude and moderately practiced care of the elderly patients. The factors that positively influenced health workers attitude to the care of the elderly were interest in taking care of the elderly patients, effective care of the elderly patient requires special training, lack of special ward for effective care of the elderly, unfavorable health care policy concerning care of the elderly difficult, difficulty in persuasion of elderly patients about their care, and lack of social support.

There was significant association (P<0.05) between knowledge of care for elderly patients and involvement in care for elderly patients among health workers in Enugu State University Teaching Hospital. Workers with less knowledge had negative attitude and low involvement, while those with more knowledge experience had positive attitude and high involvement, towards the care of the elderly patients. The study recommended the creation of special wards to enhance care of the elderly in the hospital and formulation and re-evaluation of health policies regarding health care for the elderly.