Improving diarrhoeal and clean and healthy living behaviour (PHBS) through collaboration socio-dramatic play (Ko-Berdrama) in school age children

Introduction: Indonesian health status is strongly influenced by clean and healthy living behaviour (PHBS or Perilaku Hidup Bersih dan Sehat). PHBS programmes should be implemented from school age so that healthy lifestyle practices can persist into adulthood. Community nurses implement play socio-dramas (Ko-Berdrama) as a method of health education in an effort to increase PHBS.

Objectives: To determine the effect of play socio-drama (Ko-Berdrama) intervention to change the knowledge, attitudes, and skills of PHBS in school age children.

Method: The design is a quasi experimental one for 8 months. The calculated sample size was 184 school age chidren. School age children 6-12 years old who had a problem of lack of PHBS based on the results of questionnaires and screening PHBS were included in the study. Community nurses used play socio-drama (Ko-Berdrama) in seven sessions over 6 months, staging each session for 20 minutes followed by 20 minutes of discussion, Data collection tool was a questionnaire consisting of variable knowledge, attitudes, and PHBS skills of school-age children. Data was analysed using the paired t-test.

Results: Results using the paired t-test of knowledge, attitude, and skills variables on school-age children before and after Ko-Berdrama interventions were tabulated. The results showed that socio-dramatic play significantly affects knowledge (p = 0.002), attitudes (p = 0.005), and diarrhoeal prevention skills (p = 0.008) of PHBS. Knowledge about PHBS increased from 45.1% to 61.4%, the child's attitude about PHBS increased from 44.6% to 59.8% and the skills of children about PHBS increased from 42.9% to 54.9%.

Conclusions: Socio-dramatic play (Ko-Berdrama) significantly increases knowledge, attitudes, and diarrhoeal prevention skills of clean and healthy living behaviour (PHBS) in school age children.

Sri Lanka Journal of Child Health, 2019; 48(3): 240-245