A Study to Assess the Effectiveness of Planned Teaching Programme on Knowledge and Practice Regarding Prevention of Problems Related to Sunlight Exposure Among Traffic Police Personnel in Chennai Region

AR. Bharathi^*
*Correspondence: AR. Bharathi, Department of Nursing, Bharath Institute of Higher Education and Research, India, Email:

Keywords

Health Status • Occupational Hazard • Traffic Police Personnel

Introduction

The scientific advances mainly target for developing the optimal drugs against the diseases particularly for them who have been characterized as detrimental. The scientific analyses usually are the first step to acquire the knowledge of such diseases and their causing agents. The cancers are tending to be detrimental worldwide even after prominent and intensive research criteria had been dedicated to them [1]. A prolonged and continuous analysis may give a complete understanding of such diseases. Carcinoma is a type of cancers that arose from the skins and several light rays are carcinogenic in nature. Beside, sun light also has its dangerous part as if there is continuous exposure, there could be a chance for cancer rising. In addition to, due to physiological alternation direct and continuous sun light exposure also could be reasonable criteria for the development of different diseases including cancers [2]. The ozone acts as a protective layer by inhibiting the penetration of UV rays from sun light. As industrialization, it also depleted and nowadays subsequent proportional of UV rays escape from this layer and remained to be the major cause for skin cancers in humans [3-5]. Their prevalence could be directly correlated with the ration of ozone depletion. Sunburn has been showed to be a reasonable cause for carcinoma and the occupational sun light exposure usually resulting the elevated melanoma prevalence [5]. Though there is a continuous urge regarding the occupational exposure, the people usually lack adequate awareness on it6-7. The traffic police persons have a longer time to be on the sunlight exposure and might get different health consequence due to associated reasons [6-9]. As a part, the present study aimed to assess the knowledge and practice regarding prevention of problems related to sunlight exposure among traffic police persons.

Methodology

The present study was based on the quasi experimental design and conducted in Tambaram, Chennai. Totally, 52 traffic police personnel’s were assessed for the study with simple random sampling technique. The traffic police person’s at least with 20 years old, who were posted during day time (8 hours) were selected. The persons with any abnormality such as immunocompromised, cancer affected and other medical criteria (sunburn, tanning, allergy, Tenia pedis, and skin cancer) were excluded from the study. The questionnaire was consisted of 25 questions. Part I was based on demographic variables and part II was the questions regarding the knowledge regarding the problems related to sunlight exposure. The part III regarding the preventive measures. The scoring adequate knowledge (>75%), moderately adequate knowledge (50-<75%) and for Inadequate knowledge (< 50%). The scoring interpretation for practice was categorized in to >75% as excellent, 50- <75% as good and <50% as poor respectively. The descriptive statistics like mean, frequency , percentage and standard deviation and inferential statistics like correlation co-efficient, paired‘t’ test and Chi Square test were used in the study.

Results and Discussion

Table 1, showed frequency and percentage distribution of traffic policemen with their selected demographic variables. With regard to age of traffic police personnel, the highest number of sample12 (24%) belongs to the age group of 20-26cyears, and 10 (24%) were between 31-35years, and 8 (21%) were between 36-40 years and 9(18%) were above 40 and 7(10%) were between 26-30yrs.All traffic police personnel were male. Most of the traffic policemen (56%) were from urban area than

Table 1: Results of the study.

Most of the traffic police personnel 37 (78%) were having duty 8-10hrs, 6 (12%) were having duty less than 8 hrs. and a few 7 (10%) had duty more than 10hrs. 20 (42%) of traffic police personnel had no previous history of skin problems and 25 (58%) had previous history of skin problems. 41 (82%) of the traffic police personnel had no family history of skin cancer and 9 (18%) had family history of skin cancer. Majority of the traffic police personnel 43 (86%) had no history of sunburn and 6 (12%) had history of sunburn. 29 (58%) had no habit of using sunscreen lotion and 20 (40%) had the habit of using the sunscreen lotion .It was inferred that the planned teaching programmer on knowledge regarding prevention of problems related to sunlight exposure (Figure 1) among traffic police personnel was highly effective [9,10].

Conclusion

The main aim of the present study was to assess the effectiveness of planned teaching programme on knowledge and practice regarding prevention of problems related to sunlight exposure among traffic police personnel in Chennai. So it confirms that a planned teaching programme will improve the knowledge and practice on the preventive measures of the sunlight exposure

Funding

No funding sources.

Ethical Approval

The study was approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgement

The encouragement and support from Bharath Institute of Higher Education and Research, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India is gratefully acknowledged for providing the laboratory facilities to carry out the research work.

References

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