The Effect of Education Based on Health Belief Model on Health Beliefs of Women with Urinary Tract Infection

BACKGROUND Urinary Tract Infection is one of the commonest infections which affect humans. Half of all women have a UTI in their lifetime and one fourth have recurrent infections. Health behaviours can help patients to prevent Urinary Tract Infection recurrence and changing beliefs is necessary for health behaviour change. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of education based on Health Belief Model on health beliefs of women with Urinary Tract Infection. METHODS This is a quasi-experimental study with pre-test and post-test design, conducted on 170 married women with Urinary Tract Infection, referred to selected hospital laboratories in Tehran. The laboratories were divided to experience and control groups. The data collection tool was a "self-administrated" questionnaire which was answered by samples of both groups, prior to the intervention and 12 weeks thereafter. The intervention (education based on Health Belief Model) was performed on the experiment group. RESULTS Based on the study results, after the intervention the average score of the perceived susceptibility (P<0.001), perceived severity (P<0.001), perceived benefits (P<0.001), cues to action (P<0.001) and health behaviours (P<0.001) of the experiment group showed a significant increase, compared to the control group, however, the average score of the perceived barriers (P=0.235) of the experiment group was not significantly different compared to the control group. CONCLUSION The findings showed that education based on Health Belief Model was effective in promoting the health beliefs (except perceived barriers) and health behaviours of women with Urinary Tract Infection. Therefore, it can be suggested that the mentioned model can be used as one of the strategies for prevention of Urinary Tract Infection in women.