Assessment Of Lived Experiences, Self Efficacy, And Quality Of Life Among Tuberculosis Patients In Nairobi County, Kenya
Abstract/ Overview
Compliance with treatment is an instrumental factor in achieving desired treatment outcomes. In tuberculosis treatment, lack of compliance remains a great public health threat. And so, to achieve adherence and treatment success, tuberculosis management requires an approach that focuses on the concept of individual-centered care, which will help adapt, change, and maintain behavior due to the long treatment process. This study assessed tuberculosis patients' lived experiences, self-efficacy, and quality of life in Nairobi County, Kenya. A cross-sectional study design with mixed-method research, triangulation design, and convergence model was used, employing a partially mixed, concurrent, dominant design. Interviews were conducted between May and June 2023 in five sub-counties of Ruaraka, Dagorretti, Langata, Starehe, and Embakasi East among drug-sensitive TB patients in the continuation phase of treatment. Additionally, a phenomenology approach was used to explore the lived experiences of the patients in focused group discussions and key informant interviews, which were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim followed by coding and thematic analysis. A two-stage cluster sampling was done based on the 2021 county TB workload. First, five sub-counties with the highest tuberculosis cases were purposively selected. Secondly, facilities with the highest tuberculosis cases were also purposively selected. Participants were then selected through simple random sampling(n=392). R statistical software was used for descriptive and inferential statistics where Spearman’s correlation was used to assess the association of the different domains to the overall self efficacy and quality of life levels, while Analysis of Variance was used to measure the mean differences across the domains of self efficacy and quality of life. The patient experiences such as food insecurity, mobile street families, pill burden, side effects, loss of income, long treatment duration, insufficient knowledge of tuberculosis prevention and control, insufficient diagnostic services, perceived wellness, and facility accessibility were identified in the study. The overall level of self efficacy was low 349 (89.03%) with a moderate positive correlation between the different domains and the overall level. The overall quality of life level was also low, 97(50.26%) with the domains having a strong positive correlation with the overall level except for the spiritual domain which had a weak positive correlation. All the domains in self efficacy and quality of life were statistically significant at 95% except the spiritual domain. These findings suggest other factors that may affect treatment outcomes such as the experiences, self efficacy, and quality of life of the patients. Therefore, in addition to the clinical and microbial outcomes, the tuberculosis programs need to focus on the delivery of patient-centered care and social support which is essential to the management of tuberculosis as well as improvement of the treatment outcomes.