Health-Seeking Behaviour and Its Determinants Following the COVID-19 Pandemic

Arham Yahya Rizwan Khan; Mashal Aziz Rana; Dur E Shewar Naqvi; Amina Asif; Fizza Najeeb; Sajida Naseem

doi:10.7759/cureus.52225

Health-Seeking Behaviour and Its Determinants Following the COVID-19 Pandemic

Cureus. 2024 Jan 13;16(1):e52225. doi: 10.7759/cureus.52225. eCollection 2024 Jan.

Authors

Arham Yahya Rizwan Khan¹, Mashal Aziz Rana¹, Dur E Shewar Naqvi¹, Amina Asif¹, Fizza Najeeb¹, Sajida Naseem²

Affiliations

¹ Shifa College of Medicine, Shifa Tameer-e-Millat University, Islamabad, PAK.
² Family and Community Medicine, Shifa Tameer-e-Millat University, Islamabad, PAK.

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine the change in behaviour of individuals towards any health issues they faced after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and to compare the health-seeking behaviour of people who were infected by the virus and those who were not infected.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 400 participants visiting Shifa International Hospital, Islamabad, Pakistan, and Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital, Islamabad, Pakistan. Data was collected through a pilot-tested questionnaire and analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 26.0 (Released 2019; IBM Corp., Armonk, New York, United States).

Results: In 286 participants (71.6%), health-seeking behaviours were significantly altered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, this research showed that COVID-19 was linked to poor health-seeking behaviour.

Conclusion: Most of the participants' health-seeking behaviours were significantly altered by the COVID-19 pandemic. A significant change in how people behaved towards any health problem was reported. As a result, public awareness campaigns should focus on delivering more information about COVID-19 to promote their health-seeking behaviour.

Keywords: covid 19 impact of lockdown; covid-19; global pandemic; health education & awareness; health seeking behavior.