EFFECTIVENESS OF HEALTH EDUCATION IN TERMS OF KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION ON FIRST-AID MEASURES AMONG SCHOOL STUDENTS OF A RURAL AREA OF WEST BENGAL

Abstract

Background: Imparting school children with appropriate knowledge on the prevention, control, and management of common illnesses and injuries will play a long way in reducing the morbidity and mortality of the population of all ages and sex. Hence, any above related training is unquestionably a sound and logical investment which is the most important objective of this study. Method: About 105 students of a rural school of West Bengal were administered with a self-administered questionnaire for assessing their baseline knowledge about selected first-aid skills, followed by an on-the-spot demonstration of the skills with the help of a systematically devised teaching module on the same day. Post-intervention evaluation of their knowledge acquisition was done after 2 weeks with the same questionnaire. A scoring system was devised to quantify the knowledge of students on first aid. Results: The baseline knowledge of the study subjects were found to be inadequate, correct responses being provided by less than 50% of the subjects for most of the questions. The lowest percentage of correct responses was obtained regarding the management of choking (8.6%). Paired–t-Test was done to evaluate the effectiveness of the health education, as well as Mc Nemar’s chi-square test, was done individually for each of the questions to determine the significant improvement in post-training knowledge score. The latter was found to be significantly better than the pre-education score. Conclusion: Knowledge of school students regarding the management of common illnesses and injuries should be incorporated as a part of the school curriculum