Perception of Adolescents Towards Health Related Issues in Secondary Schools, Kuwait
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Basma AR. Al-Qallaf 1 * , Bader NMB Al-Otaibi 2, Heyam A M Al-Othman 3
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1 Head of Qurain Family Center, Primary Health Care, Ministry of Health, Kuwait2 Head of Al-Ahmadi Center, Primary Health Care, Ministry of Health, Kuwait3 Head of Al-Mansoria Family Center, Primary Health Care, Ministry of Health, Kuwait* Corresponding Author

Abstract

A large number of adolescents face health problems. To explore health related topics that they want to know about, topics they actually discussed with their physician, their sources of health information. Two secondary schools were selected randomly (one for males and another for females) from each of three regions in Ahmadi governorate in Kuwait. All students registered in the selected schools, 15 – 18 years old were sequentially recruited. Anonymous self-administered questionnaire was used and included 4 sections (health care topics that adolescents want to talk about, topics that they actually discussed with the physician, sources of health information that adolescents depended upon, barriers against discussing health care issues with physicians). Data were collected from 2428 secondary school students. The study revealed that healthy nutrition, physical activities and ideal body weight are the most important health related topics students want to talk about. However, only about half of them actually discussed health related conditions with their physicians. Anxiety and depression, sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases were the least topics that students actually discussed. The majority of the participants depended on their parent as key sources of information. The reasons for not discussing these topics with physicians were feeling embarrassed and gender difference between physician and the student. There is a continuing need to change adolescent perceptions towards health related problems as well as improving physicians’ attitude towards providing health services for this sector of the population and to enhance communication with adolescent. Education program on communication skill for primary care physicians is critical

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Original Article

EUR J GEN MED, Volume 9, Issue 3, July 2012, 162-169

https://doi.org/10.29333/ejgm/82453

Publication date: 10 Jul 2012

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