Assessment of Low Patient Social Support and its Associated Factors Among Hospitalized Medical Surgical Adult Inpatients in Public Hospitals, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2020. Multi -Center Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract Introduction: Patient social support is a network or web of social relationships that each individual keeps including the closest people, such as family, close friends and other neighborhood or community individuals in the hospital as well as out of the hospitals. Patient psychosocial support influences the health status and treatment effectiveness, getting quality of care in a hospitalized medical surgical inpatient. It should be practiced in hospital setting than community setting. Objective: To assess low patient social support and its associated factors among medical surgical adult inpatients in public hospitals, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2020.Methods: Institutional based cross sectional study was conducted with 380 study subjects from March 1-30, 2020. Systematic random sampling technique was used and data was collected using interviewer administered questionnaire. Trained nursing students collected data, collected data was entered into Epi-data 3.1 and export to SPSS version 26 for analysis, and then binary and multiple logistic regression was performed to check the association between dependent and independent variable.Result: In this study, low level of patient social support was 61.9%, while 38.1% of them have high level of patient social support. Variables being housewives [AOR=3.41; 95%CI (1.145-10.153)], chat chewing [AOR=2.596; 95%CI (1.072-6.288)], psychosocial counseling [AOR=4.149; 95 %CI (0.075-0.771) and Previous history of hospitalization [AOR=1.673; 95%CI (1.019-2.746) were found to be significantly associated with low patient social support. While age, sex, ethnicity, religion, income, alcohol drink, smoking, other illegal substance use, and family history of mental health problem, having mental illness, type of case and length of hospital stay were not significantly associated.Conclusion and recommendation: The overall level of patient social support in hospitalized patients was low and being housewives, chat chewing, psychosocial counselling, and Previous history of hospitalization were significantly associated with low level of patient social support among adult inpatients, therefore health care providers should provide special consideration to those group of patients admitted to the hospitals.