ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Teaching individuals at the early-career stage what and how to respect organizational codes of conduct is a good step in creating a democratic working environment. As a result, it is important to coach students in sustaining organizational well-being by seeking the truth, teaching the truth and upholding the truth. Currently, how these are taught in institutions of higher learning lacks structure. In fact, some graduate students are displaying work-deviant behaviors showing that they have poor perceptions of work-related ethics. Using this reason, we tested the impact of exposure to rational career reflective training on work-related ethics among student-philosophers. METHODS: This is a pretest, posttest with a follow-up pure experimental design was used. A total of 105 student-philosophers were recruited, assessed 3 times using Ethics and irrational beliefs measures, and coached by therapists. The participants were exposed to 12-session rational career reflective training. The data collected were subjected to a multivariate statistical analysis to test how effective the intervention was in changing negative perceptions about ethics. RESULTS: It was found that rational career reflective training changes negative perceptions about work-related ethics among student-philosophers. The effectiveness of rational career reflective training is not statistically influenced by gender and group interaction. Gender does not moderate the impact of the intervention. CONCLUSION: This study finally suggests that rational career reflective training effectively changes negative perceptions about ethics among student-philosophers. Thus, recommends the advancement of Ellis principles in other workplaces and across populations.
Subject(s)
Curriculum , Students, Medical , HumansABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Maternal mortality is attributed to combination of contextual factors that cause delay in seeking care, leading to poor utilization of skilled health services. Community participation is one of the acknowledged strategies to improve health services utilization amongst the poor and rural communities. The study aimed at assessing the potentials of improving birth preparedness and complication readiness (BP/CR) using community-driven behavioural change intervention among pregnant women in rural Nigeria. METHODS: A pre-post intervention study was conducted from June 2018 to October 2019 on 158 pregnant women selected through multi-stage sampling technique from 10 villages. Data on knowledge and practices of birth preparedness and utilization of facility health services were collected through interviewer-administered pre-tested structured questionnaire. Behavioural change intervention comprising of stakeholders' engagement, health education, facilitation of emergency transport and fund saving system, and distribution of educational leaflets/posters were delivered by twenty trained volunteer community health workers. The intervention activities focused on sensitization on danger signs of pregnancy, birth preparedness and complication readiness practices and emergency response. Means, standard deviations, and percentages were calculated for descriptive statistics; and T-test and Chi square statistical tests were carried out to determine associations between variables. Statistical significance was set at p-value < 0.05. RESULTS: The result showed that after the intervention, mean knowledge score of danger signs of pregnancy increased by 0.37 from baseline value of 3.94 (p < 0.001), and BP/CR elements increased by 0.27 from baseline value of 4.00 (p < 0.001). Mean score for BP/CR practices increased significantly by 0.22 for saving money. The proportion that had antenatal care (76.6%) and had facility delivery (60.0%) increased significantly by 8.2 and 8.3% respectively. Participation in Community-related BP/CR activities increased by 11.6% (p = 0.012). CONCLUSION: With the improvements recorded in the community-participatory intervention, birth preparedness and complication readiness should be promoted through community, household and male-partner inclusive strategies. Further evaluation will be required to ascertain the sustainability and impact of the programme.
