Influence of psycho-social support programme on retention of hiv patient in ampath care based clinic in eldoret, kenya.

Abstract

Psycho-social support for HIV infected patients is critical in ensuring these patients remain connected to the health facility. This is because HIV patients need medication attention and support that should always be within their reach. Ensuring these pateints get the neccessary psychosial support increases their opportunities to be in touch with the health care insututions and these would be paramount to their health status. Despite provision of free medicine offered by the organizations, many HIV infected patient have not often been attending the clinics to collect the drugs and there has continued to be a decline in the number of those attending the clinic after being tested and put on treatment, the number of those attending the clinic continuing declining. With this in mind this study investigated the influence of psychosocial support with a focus to disclosure counseling, transport facilitation, peer educator groups and adherence monitoring on the retention of HIV patients in ampath care based clinic in eldoret, Kenya. The purpose of the study was to assess the influence of psycho-social support programme on retention into care based clinic among patients with HIV in Eldoret, Kenya. This study was guided by the following specific objectives, to; estabilish how disclosure counseling influence retention of HIV patients in AMPATH care based clinic in Eldoret, Kenya, examine how transport reimbursement influence retention of HIV patients in AMPATH care based clinic in Eldoret, Kenya, investigate how peer educator groups counseling influence retention of HIV patients in AMPATH care based clinic in Eldoret, Kenya and to determine how adherence counseling influence retention of HIV patients in AMPATH care based clinic in Eldoret, Kenya. The study adopted a descriptive survey study design. The target population for this study included 355 respondents made up of325 patients and & are caregiver providers (staff). Therefore for this study 30% of 325 patients were sampled to give 87 sample sizes of patients and 30 health care providers. The study used two research instruments namely the questionnaire and guided interview schedules. In this study, questionnaires was piloted in a pilot survey using 8 patients and interview schedules to 2 pyschosocial staff from mosoriot AMPATH clinic. The reliability tests for all the variables revealed a coefficient of 0.863which was above 0.70. The variables were therefore reliable for use by the study. Data was organized and analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. This study used tables to present the information. The study findings from the regression model indicated that there was a significant relationship between Disclosure Counselingand Retention of HIV Patients (p=0.000). The study concluded that the level of self-competence of the healthcare providers determines the quality of care and retention of HIV patients. The study recommended that the health care providers should enrich proper records for the people who attend clinic and peer educator groups in order to clear understand the increase or decrease in the numbers of patients attending to these services.