Knowledge, attitude and use of direction signs among patients and care givers within Mulago national referral hospital.

Abstract

Background Signage is a way of creating knowledge or awareness of where one is going prior to arrival. Signs are used in various environments such as large facilities, schools, roads etc. Before the existence of language, pictograms (word pictures) were a means of signage. Pictograms were used as direction signs however they mainly served an informal function until world migrations increased and universal signage was created. In Mulago National Referral Hospital there are direction signs but there is need to find out why patients and caregivers always lose track and que in wrong places in search for their intended destinations hence losing much time. Objective To determine the knowledge, attitudes and use of direction signs among patients and caregivers visiting Mulago National Referral Hospital. Methods This was a cross sectional descriptive study that employed quantitative methods. The study was carried out at the Mulago Hospital Assessment Centre, surgical outpatients department and the casualty ward. Simple Random Sampling was used to select a total of 281 participants. Data was collected using close ended semi structured questionnaires. Data was entered in Epi-data 3.02 software and exported to SPSS Version 20 for analysis. Frequencies and proportions were obtained to describe the data. Logistic regression analysis was done to establish the association between the variables at 95% confidence interval. Results The majority of the respondents 57.3% were females, 35.6% were under 30 years of age and only 13.5% had attained a higher level of education. Most respondents 73.7% were knowledgeable about direction signs, 94.3% agreed that direction signs easily lead someone to their intended destination, 81.2% agreed that direction signs helped them reach the wards for medication. However 92.95% of respondents agreed that patients and caregivers usually inquire from place to place for guidance to the intended wards which indicated that signs were inadequate in the facility or patients and caregivers do not interpret them well. 85.8% of the respondents had ever used direction signs. Education level and level of knowledge were statistically significant for use of direction signs among respondents. xii Conclusion The level of knowledge and the use of direction signs is high among patients and caregivers. However the biggest percentage of the respondents still has to inquire from other patients for directions either because patients and caregivers do not interpret signs well or they are inadequate in the facility. There is need to increase the number of direction signs in the hospital and more identification signs should be placed such that all units are easily identified by the Hospital users.