Objective: The purpose of the study was to assess the challenges facing school health services provided to children with chronic diseases at governmental schools in southern area of Gaza Strip.
Methods: The study utilized descriptive, cross-sectional design. The sample of the study is census sample, consisted of two groups: First group included 127 school health teachers from Rafah and Khan Younis, 120 teachers agreed to participate in the study with response rate 94.4%. Second group included 28 school health providers from directorate of school health at ministry of health. For data collection, the researcher developed two self-administered questionnaires (one for health care providers and one for school health teachers). The reliability of the questionnaires were tested by a pilot study and crobache alpha of the domains ranged between 0.721 to 0.959 for school health providers and 0.710 to 0.856 for school health teachers. The researcher used SPSS (22) for data analysis, and statistical analysis included frequencies, percentage, cross-tabulation, Chi square and Fisher’s exact test.
Results: The results showed that 57.1% of school health providers and 50% of school health teachers were females, majority of them were married, mean age of SHPs was 43.642 years and mean age for SHTs was 39.716 years, the majority of them have Bachelor Degree, and most of them did not receive special training about care of chronic diseases. The results found low school health services for children with chronic diseases (diabetes, asthma, chronic renal failure and epilepsy). The results also indicated that SHPs have high knowledge about chronic diseases and SHTs have above moderate knowledge. There were no statistical significant differences in level of knowledge related to gender, age, educational level, experience and previous training. Challenges that face school health included inadequate healthcare providers, shortage of supplies and logistics and low administrative support especially in aspects of incentives and availability of supplies and materials. The results also indicated moderate coordination between school health providers and school administration.
Conclusion: The study concluded that there was a need to increase the number of qualified healthcare providers in the school health team and to provide adequate training to school health team to improve their skills and abilities to offer quality school health services.
Published Date: 2023-09-29; Received Date: 2020-09-04
