Improving Nursing Students’ Knowledge about Health Myths in Indonesia

Abstract

Health myths are one of the factors that can hinder the achievement of government programs in the health sector, resistance that arises from the community can be even greater if the myths that are believed to have taken root in social life and are considered to have magical elements in their implementation. To change the wrong health beliefs in society, the role of health workers in providing health education and health literacy to all levels in society is important. Based on the problems found, the team's goal was to improve nursing students’ knowledge about health myths in Indonesia. The implementation of these activities was carried out for 199 nursing students from 7 provinces (DKI Jakarta, West Java, Banten, Jambi, East Java, Central Java, and Southeast Sulawesi) online through Zoom. This activity is the final series of a series of activities carried out by the Institute of Training, Education, and Research, Nurse Share Idea (NSID) about health myths that exist in Indonesia, while the implementation of this series of activities has been carried out from November 2020 to August 2021. The results of the Wilcoxon test of activities carried out can be seen in table 3. which shows that the value of sig = 0.002 (<0.005) means that the activities carried out have a positive impact on improving nursing students’ knowledge about health myths in Indonesia. Nurses have a role in facilitating public access to reliable health knowledge and information related to existing mythical issues. In supporting the role of nurses, activities to increase the knowledge of nurses and nursing students on topics related to health myths are also an important part to be considered and carried out on an ongoing basis because it has been proven to have a positive effect on its implementation.