| Abstrakt: |
Background: The cost of wound dressing alone constitutes a major financial burden for successful wound care. This cost is known to be influenced by frequency of wound dressing, length of hospitalization, type and cost of dressing materials, consumables and product used. The thrust of this study was to examine the correlation between patient's socio-demographic characteristics and the cost of wound dressing per acute care episode Method: A descriptive cross-sectional research design was used. The study was conducted in three Nigerian teaching hospitals reputed for wound care and other traumatic injuries. Study sites included medical, surgical, orthopaedic & plastic wards as well as burn, radio-oncology and neuroscience units. The data were collected via interview administered questionnaire designed based on systematic literature view and researchers previous field experience. Hypothesis was tested by inferential statistic at 0.05 level of significance while ethical approval was received from each of the hospital Result: Most of the respondents fall between the age group 30-39 years. 63% of the respondents are male while 37% are female. The highest level of education was secondary school. Respondents were mostly artisans and traders. Majority earn less than N50000 as monthly income. There was a weak correlation between respondent's age (r= -0.097, p= 0.185 > 0.05), education (r= -0.008, p= 0.936 > 0.05), gender (r = 0.133, p= 0.296>0.05), occupation (r=0.001, p=0.993>0.05), family size (r= -0.161, p= 0.026<0.05), monthly income (r = -0.071, p=0.331> 0.05,) and cost of wound dressing per acute care episode Conclusion: Finding suggests no significant relationship between patient's socio-demographic characteristics and cost of wound dressing per acute care episode. Therefore, there is an urgent need to include artisans, traders, hawkers, small business owners and other low-income earners in the National Health Insurance Scheme [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
