Effect of health education program intervention on women's perception about menopause and their intention to use hormone replacement therapy

ABSTRACT

Menopause affects women's health and well being; so, hormone replacement therapy [HRT] could benefit women who have reached natural menopause, surgical menopause or have a family history of osteoporosis. It was found that women's attitude towards menopause and their knowledge of the benefits and risks of HRT have a direct effect on their use of it. This work aimed at studying the knowledge and perception of women towards menopause and HRT as a management for it, and some determinants affecting knowledge and attitude. Also, it aimed at intervening with a health education program concerning menopause and HRT, studying its effect on knowledge and attitude. It is a non-experimental pretest-post test design used. The study was conducted during the year 2003 from 1st of March to end of July. It included 174 women aged from 28-60 years working at Tanta University Administration. At first all women received-[1] a questionnaire sheets which included some personal data plus a pre-test questionnaire of the knowledge and attitude about menopause and HRT; [2] a brief booklet about the issues of menopause and HRT, needed for health education. Second, health education settings were applied for all the studied sample regarding the topics in the booklet then the post test questionnaire was filled after one month. About one third of the women included had a good [satisfactory] knowledge towards menopause [31.03%] and more than half had a positive attitude [52.87%]. No one in the sample utilized HRT. More than two thirds of the sample showed a poor knowledge of HRT [68.97%] while, more than one third had a positive attitude to HRT utilization. Both of the knowledge and attitude to menopause and HRT were affected by many variables such as older age, severe menopausal symptoms, previous or current use of contraceptive hormones, but with different variations. Health education improved significantly knowledge about menopause and HRT and improved the attitude particularly towards menopause. Doctors ranked 1st as the source of knowledge to HRT [62.11%] while friends and relatives ranked 1st as regards menopause [50.38%]. This study recommended a more scientific orientation about menopause among women for better understanding about HRT, also education and training of both physicians and nurses on different issues about menopause and HRT