ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to describe the aspects related with the adherence of medicine in patients with epilepsy diagnosis. The non probabilistic sample was composed by fifty-four parents or legal guardians of children/adolescents with epilepsy. A self-report instrument was utilized in this study and the design was based on Health Belief Model. Descriptive statistics were utilized (mean, median, frequencies and percents) to describe the results and crosstabs tables to describe specific relations between variables. It was found that the parents/legal guardians reported that they administered their children's medications as prescribed. However, the two aspects that most affect the adherence with the treatment were that the participant forgot the medicine administration and the time between each medical appointment. We conclude that the adherence problem is complex and involved a lot of individual, social, psychological, structural, attitudes, beliefs, type of medical services factors, among others. These factors will be studied more emphatically in futures studies.
Subject(s)
Adolescent , Adult , Child , Child, Preschool , Female , Humans , Infant , Infant, Newborn , Male , Middle Aged , Caregivers , Epilepsy , Patient Compliance , Anticonvulsants , Data Interpretation, Statistical , Puerto Rico , Time FactorsABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: This assessment was aimed at describing the perceptions of a group of Puerto Rican pregnant adolescents regarding the susceptibility, severity, benefits and barriers of adolescents pregnancy. METHOD: A non probabilistic sample of 71 adolescents that receive prenatal services at a hospital in the greater metropolitan area of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Descriptive statistics were utilized to describe the population. RESULTS: A 50.7 per cent of the participants had a moderated high susceptibility perception and 53.5 per cent had a high severity perception. In general, 70.4 per cent of the participants perceived that the prenatal care during the adolescent pregnancy is highly beneficial and 60.0 per cent had a low barriers perceptions. CONCLUSION: The assessment specifically demonstrated the need to create permanent educational programs in hospitals and schools. It is important that the health professionals develop basic educational strategies to procure effective behavior modification in adolescents.