Creencias sobre la insuficiencia renal crónica entre expertos y profanos

Abstract

Objective: to identify beliefs and representations that patients, general public and experts keep about CKD.
Methods:
Cross-sectional study with a sample of 120 participants selected by non-probabilistic sampling. Five study groups were created according to their level of interaction with the disease. The tool used to identify and analyze the beliefs of the participants was the “Cuestionario de Creencias Sobre la Enfermedad” (Beliefs Questionnaire about Disease).
Results:
Identity, Controllability, mutability, Personal Responsibility and Chance present no signifi cant differences among groups. Causes factor shows statistically significant difference between the group of patients with health science students and experts (p
<0.001), and between health science students with students different from health sciences and experts (p <0.001). Inability factor shows significant differences between patients, students different from health sciences and general population (p <0.001)
and between experts, general population and students different from health sciences (p <0.001).
Patients provide a smaller number of symptoms associated with both CKD and HD. As for the causes, biological and behavioral origin is the most considered by all groups. Only HD patients considered chance a possible causal factor of the disease.
Conclusions:
As opposed to what scientifi c models defend, patients and general population share the idea that chronic renal disease is a curable condition, that the onset depends mainly on chance and behavioral patterns, and that it is a less serious condition than what experts in renal care state. Suffering the disease offers more information about it (not necessarily knowledge) and this information is recalled according to its usefulness to achieve greater wellbeing or improvement in health care.