Community health workers' knowledge, attitudes and practices in the detection of respiratory symptomatic patients.

OBJECTIVES

to analyze the association between community health workers' knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding respiratory symptomatic patient detection in Primary Health Care.

METHODS

a cross-sectional study conducted in Family Health Units in Santa Izabel do Pará, Brazil, with a census sample of 129 community health workers. A questionnaire based on the Advocacy, Communication, and Social Mobilization for TB Control guide was used to survey knowledge, attitudes, and practices. Descriptive statistics and chi-square test were used, with a 95% significance level (p≤0.05).

RESULTS

the predominant participants were female (n=96/74.4%), aged 40-49 years (n=54/41.9%), with complete high school education (n=86/66.7%), Catholic (n=65/50.4%), brown skin color/race (n=109/84.5%), and 20 years of experience (n=55/42.6%). Associations between knowledge and attitudes (p=0.2582) and between knowledge and practices (p=0.8973) were not statistically significant.

CONCLUSIONS

workers' attitudes and practices in the search for respiratory symptomatic patients were not determined by their level of knowledge about tuberculosis.