Evaluation of Knowledge and Awareness regarding COVID-19 Disease among Medical and Dental students in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the levels of information regarding the current emerging outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) among medical and dental students at universities in Saudi Arabia through an online questionnaire. Methods: A detailed structured questionnaire was prepared, containing demographic profiles and questions related to knowledge and awareness of the COVID-19 pandemic, and was emailed to 240 subjects, out of these, 209 responded to all the questions. Results: The majority of the respondents were aware of the current and past epidemics of the coronavirus diseases, and they heard about SARS or MERS (89.5%) and the COVID-19 pandemic (94.7%). Internet was the main source of information (63.1%) followed by professors and physicians (24.2%), print media (6.1%), television (4%), and family or friends (2.5%). The majority of respondents received information about COVID-19 from the Ministry of Health (85.6%) and 44.5% of respondents participated in the COVID-19 symposium or conference. Respondents of the college of Medicine were more aware (96.1%) about COVID-19 than respondents of the college of Dentistry (86.2%; p=0.02). Conclusion: The study finds a high level of COVID-19 awareness among medical and dental students at KSA universities. However, there is a need to study in a community-level assessment regarding knowledge about COVID-19

Knowledge about the COVID-19 pandemic among undergraduate medical and dental students in Lalitpur, Nepal

“…Good knowledge about the causative factors, the virus, and the routes of transmission can be attributed to the availability of information in the electronic media such as television, radio, social networking sites, and different websites. These findings were also seen in a study done among university students in Jordan and Saudi Arabia [20,23,27].…”

“…Our study showed that only 71% of students were aware about the mode of transmission of this virus, which is lesser compared to similar studies from India and Saudi Arabia among students, where 91% and 98.1% of students knew about the transmission modes and the signs and symptoms of the disease [22,23]. A study from Jordan evaluated the knowledge of transmissions of infection from one infected individual to others [19].…”

“…This may be due to access to various sources of information including government health authorities and social media which plays pivotal role in knowledge gain [33]. This finding was different to findings from Saudi Arabia where students from MBBS background were found to be more aware (96.1%) than the students from BDS background (86.2%) [23]. Similar findings were indicated in a study where older students in a higher year of study showed better knowledge as compared to the younger students from initial years of medical education [18,26].…”

“…This was in accordance with a recent study from Turkey and Pakistan [17,21], where most students (97.4%) were aware of the causes and the viral nature of the disease. A study from India and Saudi Arabia also showed that 92.7%, and 94.7% of the participants had good knowledge about the disease [22,23].…”

“…Studies have shown that availability of information in mass and social media can be a source of information for the students [22,23]. Of the respondents, 91.5% were also aware of the cautionary actions, self-isolation period as per WHO guidelines and the effective use of mask for preventing corona infection (94.3%).…”