An Investigation on the Fear of Dying and its Influence on the Healthcare seeking behaviour of Jamaicans during Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
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Abstract
Introduction: Since the onset of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in March 2020, approximately 188, 332,972 confirmed cumulative cases, including 4, 063,453cumulative total deaths worldwide as of July 16, 2021. According to the WHO Coronavirus Dashboard, Jamaica has 50,848 cumulative total cases with 1,334 cumulative total deaths with a community transmission classification.
Objective: This study seeks to (1) determine if Jamaicans have a fear of dying, (2) examine if Jamaicans' fear of dying influenced how frequently they seek health care, and (3) identify if the fear of dying increased among Jamaicans since the pandemic.
Methods: A nonprobability sampling questionnaire survey reached 682 sampled respondents across Jamaica using Google Forms with a response rate of 63.92 per cent. The data was then transferred from Google Forms into Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for analysis. The researchers ran descriptive and inferential statistics on the data, and an established standardized questionnaire was used to collect the data.
Results: Before COVID-19, 54.3% (n=370) of sampled respondents indicated that they feared dying. In addition, 76.5% (n=522) of the sampled respondents stated that they sought health care services such as clinics, dentists, labs, et cetera only when they felt ill. However, since COVID-19, 54.3% (n=370) of the sampled respondents have expressed a fear of dying, whereas 44.6 (n=304) seek health care services such as clinic, dentist, labs, et cetera only when they feel ill. Furthermore, 61.8% (302) mentioned that COVID-19 had not increased their fear of dying.
Conclusions: The current study has shown that multiple factors contribute to healthcare seeking behaviour. While fear of death is one of them, it only accounts for a small percentage of this behaviour. However, the fear of dying has no significant association with the healthcare-seeking behaviour of Jamaicans.