Compliance towards clinic follow-up and its related factors among cerebral-palsied children at Hospital Ipoh, Perak, 1994

Abstract

A cross-sectional study on compliance towards clinic follow-up and its related factors was conducted at the Paediatric Clinic of Ipoh Hospital from December 1993 to March 1994. All 124 Cerebral-palsied children within the age limit of 3-12 years, attending the clinic and have been registered for at least one year before the study period participated in this study. Information were obtained from their guardian via a pre-tested guided questionaire. The result of the study showed that only 37.9% of the sample has good compliance. The distribution of good compliance was highest among the Malays (50%), followed by the Chinese (22.8%) and the lowest among the Indians (21%). Compliance was also found to be significantly associated with ethnicity, parental educational status and income (p<0.05). On the other hand compliance was not associated with functional dependency of the cerebral-palsied chiloren or parental practice in relation to care of the handicapped children. In conclusion, compliance of clinic follow-up in the studied population is lowand it is associated with socioeconomic factors. Poor compliance is still a problem. Better identification of the group with poor compliance is recommended in order to provide room for improvement.