Improving COVID-19 Knowledge in a community located in the Caroní municipality, Venezuela

Abstract

Introduction: despite the devastating effect of COVID-19, many nations have lifted their restrictions. It is necessary to keep addressing this problem using the promotion via, in order to increase people's health training.

Objective: to assess the efficacy of an educational program performed to increase the level of knowledge concerning COVID-19 in patients who live in the Aponwao Village, Caroni, Venezuela, during the period November 2021-February 2022.

Method: a pre-experimental intervention study was carried out, with a before-and-after design implied. A total of 85 patients were chosen as sample, selected by simple random sampling. It was applied a survey to all the patients selected, an educational-didactic and interactive program was designed and implemented, and a final evaluation was carried out to verify the effectiveness of the program.

Results: female sex was the most representative group (54.1%) and 41.2% of patients were in the age group of 25 to 44. The predominant risk factor was the non-use of means for prevention against Covid 19 infection (28.6 %) and 17.6 % of patients surveyed suffered from hypertension. Before carried out the intervention study, 48.2% of participants had an insufficient level of knowledge; after applied the educational program, 52.9% increase their knowledge passing to ¨Good¨ knowledge level.

Conclusions: the implementation of the educational program made possible to increase the level of knowledge concerning COVID-19, so that its efficacy for preventing this infection in Primary Health Care it is effective.