Family Physicians' Knowledge about and Attitudes towards COVID-19 - A Cross-sectional Multicentric Study

Abstract

Background:The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has affected every country on earth, and family physicians (FPs) have helped patients at every stage. The first objective of our study was to study the FPs' knowledge about COVID-19 and second objective was to assess their attitudes, stress and death anxiety surrounding the current pandemic. Materials and Methods: An online questionnaire was prepared to collect responses from FPs between March-April 2020. A descriptive and correlational design was utilized. Results: 240 FPs from eight countries were evaluated. The majority reported that they received most information from medical journals (77%). Most of the respondents also noted that the most common symptoms were acute respiratory syndrome and fever -with the most effective treatment in most cases consisting of symptomatic treatment (41%). Although FPs generally had a positive attitude, most of them (68%) were concerned about contacting COVID-19 from patients and as a result, they experienced increased stress (64%). Conclusion:The research was conducted during the COVID-19 outbreak while the FPs were working on the frontline of the pandemic. This research revealed that most of the FPs had good knowledge of, and a positive attitude towards COVID-19 treatment. It was observed that participants who tended towards conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience, and who had higher life satisfaction, and lower levels of death anxiety also reported more positive attitudes towards COVID-19. While the main target population of COVID-19 disease were the older age groups, FPs' attitudes and fear levels were not associated with age, gender, or years of experience.

Impacts of Personality on Job Performance Through COVID-19 Fear and Intention to Quit

“…We discovered that there was no significant association between agreeableness and COVID-19 fear, consistent with the findings of Gokdemir et al (2020). The participants in the present study had no COVID-19 fear, which may be because agreeable people are more adaptive compared to other personality types (Ahmed et al, 2021).…”

“…This indicates that conscientiousness is related to individuals' commitment to following the measures for COVID-19 containment. Accordingly, participants who are more conscientious tend to display lower anxiety levels and more constructive attitudes regarding COVID-19 (Gokdemir et al, 2020). Moreover, conscientiousness is an important predictor of intention to quit (Hadiyat et al, 2020); specifically, it is negatively associated with intention to quit (Singh et al, 2014).…”

GP wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review

“…There were 25 cross-sectional surveys, 30 – 33 , 36 – 50 , 52 , 54 , 55 , 57 – 59 five qualitative studies, 34 , 35 , 51 , 53 , 56 and one mixed survey and qualitative study. 29 Several validated and some non-validated measures were used to assess outcomes.…”

An Analysis of the Attitudes of Family Physicians Towards the COVID-19 Vaccine

“…A multi-centre study investigating the knowledge and attitudes of 250 family physicians from eight countries about COVID-19 between March and April 2020, in a period that could be considered as the beginning of the pandemic, reported that 105 (42%) participants wanted to volunteer in COVID-19 vaccine studies, and in like manner, 68 (27%) participants stated that they could encourage family members or friends to volunteer (14). In our study, the number of family physicians who voluntarily participated in the Phase 3 Trials of the COVID-19 vaccine was only 6 (1.2%), yet the mean positive attitude score of the participants in relation to their willingness for family members' getting the COVID-19 vaccine was found to be high in all participants with the score of 3.9 ± 0.9.…”