Factors influencing the public utilisation of Well Person’s Clinic in a West African country

Objectives: Screening is an important part of preventive medicine. Ideally, screening tools identify patients early enough to provide treatment and avoid or reduce symptoms and other consequences (like sudden deaths), improving health outcomes of the population at a reasonable cost. The results obtained at baseline and subsequent visits can serve as useful monitoring and evaluation of the well-being of the client. It can be a source of information required by employers of labour for employment of staff, periodic medical reports on the health of staff or for promotion of staff. The objective of this study was to assess the factors influencing attendance in a Well Person’s Clinic among staff of the Calabar Teaching Hospital, Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria. Material and Methods: A cross-sectional study design was adopted. A multi-stage sampling technique was employed to select the respondents. A semi-structured self-administered pretested questionnaire (self-designed) was used to collect data from the study population. Results: A total of 361 staff were surveyed. Only 99 (27%) of them were aware that the Well person’s clinic existed in the Teaching Hospital. Of this number, 99 (27%), more than half of them, 59 (59.6%), knew that the Well Clinic was domiciled in the Department of Community Medicine. The low patronage of the clinic by the staff of the hospital was largely due to poor awareness, 241 (66.8%) of the respondents, with 105 (29.1%) of the respondents citing busy schedules. However, the majority 227 (63%) of the respondents carried out routine medical checkups periodically elsewhere. Conclusion: There is low awareness of the presence of the Well Person’s Clinic, which accounted for the low patronage. There is therefore a need for more awareness creation. The idea of linking the clinic with the National Health Insurance Agency should be explored to ease the high financial burden of payment for the various tests carried out at the clinic, which would allow for an enhanced uptake of the screening services provided by the clinic.