Knowledge and attitude of mandatory infectious disease notification among final year medical students

Abstract

Background:Disease surveillance is one of the major components to combat against infectious diseases. As health-care professionals are indispensable to mandatory notifiable disease surveillance, their knowledge and attitudes toward infectious disease notification played an important role for timely and effective reporting to the surveillance system. Therefore, we aimed to determine the knowledge of mandatory notifiable infectious diseases in Malaysia and attitude towards infectious disease reporting among final year medical students.Methods:A cross-sectional study was conducted from May to June 2017 in the private medical college in Malaysia.Materials and Methods:We purposively selected the final year (semester 10) medical students and a total of 124 students participated in this study. We collected data using a self-administered, structured questionnaire. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, independent t-test, and one-way analysis of variance.Results:Among the final year medical students, 47.5% had moderate knowledge but 4.2% had good knowledge of mandatory infectious disease notification. Only 3.2% of the students correctly answered all the notifiable diseases listed in the questionnaire. Most of the students had positive attitude toward communicable diseases reporting, rewards, and penalty for notification. There was no significant relationship between sociodemographic characteristics and knowledge and attitude of infectious disease notification.Conclusions:The majority of the final year medical students had moderate level of knowledge and positive attitude of infectious disease notification; however, there were some deficiencies. Better instruction and training on infectious disease notification procedures of Malaysia should be provided to the final year medical students which could not only reduce underreporting but also improve timely and effective reporting in future.

Knowledge, Attitude, and Behavior of Egyptian Medical Students Toward the Novel Coronavirus Disease-19: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Particularly, gender findings goes in accordance with a recent Egyptian COVID-19 survey among the general public which demonstrated similar and non-significant differences in the knowledge mean scores between male and female participants [15]. Furthermore, our gender findings go in consonance with the disclosures of a previous Malaysian survey among final year medical students which investigated their knowledge of mandatory notifiable infectious diseases (TD) [9]. In developing countries, this is particularly important because the students' future role as HCWs in the country's disease surveillance system is one of the major constituents to fight against TD.…”

“…Addressing their current knowledge, attitude, and behavior (KAB) of this newly emerging pandemic is a vital necessity, not only to be able to protect themselves but also to disseminate the correct information to their local communities [8]. People in times of pandemics, and sever fright crave after any medical field member (including medical students) to gain their knowledge and correct their behaviors [9], [10].…”