Management of chronic non-communicable diseases in Ghana: a qualitative study of patients’ coping strategies and the role of caregivers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases (CNCDs) has become a major cause of mortality and disability globally. We explored the coping strategies adopted by CNCD patients and the roles of caregivers in the management of CNCDs in Ghana. METHODS: This was a qualitative study that adopted an exploratory design. The study was carried out at the Volta Regional Hospital. Purposive convenience sampling procedures were used to sample patients and caregivers. Data for the study were collected using in-depth interview guides. Data were collected among 25 CNCDs patients and 8 caregivers and analysed thematically using ATLAS.ti. RESULTS: Patients adopted a variety of strategies to cope with their condition. These strategies were emotion-oriented coping, task-oriented coping, and avoidance-oriented coping. Family members were the main caregivers, who provided social and financial support for patients. Financial challenges, inadequate family support, poor attitudes of health workers, delays at the health facility, unavailability of drugs at the facility, and patients' non-adherence to the medical advice were major challenges that militated against caregivers' efforts in supporting patients in the management of their CNCDs. CONCLUSION: We found that patients adopted various strategies to cope with their conditions. The roles of the caregivers in supporting patients in the management practices were identified as very important as they contribute immensely to the financial and social support for the patients in their management of CNCDs. It is crucial that health professionals actively involve caregivers in every aspect of the day-to-day management of CNCDs as these caregivers spend more time with these patients and understand them better.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".