Abstract:

Background: There are many misconceptions or wrong belief about stroke. These wrong beliefs are held by non-health care professionals due to their little understanding and awareness about stroke. The aim of this study is to assess the level of right beliefs about stroke and its associated factors among private primary school teachers from Faith Standard Primary School, Ile Ife, Nigeria.

Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study design using 27-item, self-administered questionnaires to collect information on level of right beliefs about stroke among the respondents. Data were analyzed and presented using descriptive statistics.

Results: A total of 29 private primary school teachers from Faith Standard School, Ile Ife, Osun State, Nigeria with 13.8% males and 86.2% females took part in this study. The overall stroke belief score obtained was 68.28 ± 18.09. Among all the sociodemographic variables considered in this study, statistical significant relationship was found only between marital status and the mean stroke belief scores (F (2, 26) = 7.655; P= 0.02). Also, 25.58%, 65.52% and 6.90% of the respondents have high, moderate and low level of right beliefs about stroke respectively.

Conclusions: There is moderate level of right beliefs about stroke among the private primary school teachers from Faith standard primary school, Ile Ife. Therefore, there is still need for public health education on right beliefs about stroke to correct some misconceptions (wrong notions) held about stroke beliefs among them.

Keywords: Stroke, right beliefs, misconceptions, teachers.

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