Knowledge, attitude, practice and perceived barriers among healthcare professionals regarding COVID-19: A Cross-sectional survey from Pakistan

Abstract

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a highly transmittable infection and Pakistan faces sudden hike in number of positive cases including number of healthcare professionals (HCPs) also acquired infection. Knowledge, attitude, and practice survey provides a suitable format to evaluate existing programs and to identify effective strategies for behavior change in society. Therefore, the aim of study is to assess knowledge, attitude and practice among HCPs in Pakistan regarding COVID-19. An online survey-based study was conducted among healthcare professionals including physicians, pharmacists and nurses. A self-administered validated (Cronbach alpha= 0.077) questionnaire comprised of five sections (Demographics, Knowledge, attitude, practice and perceived barriers) were used for data collection. Of 414 participants, 29.98% (n=120) physicians, 46.65% (n= 189) pharmacists and 25.36% (n= 105%) nurses. Most commonly utilized information source was social media. Findings showed HCPs have good knowledge (93.2%, n=386), positive attitude (8.43±1.78) and good practice (88.7%, n=367) regarding COVID-19. HCPs perceived that overcrowding in emergency room (52.9%, n=219), limited infection control material (50.7%, n=210) and poor knowledge regarding transmission (40.6%, n=168) of COVID-19 are the major barriers in infection control practice. Binary logistic regression analysis demonstrated that HCPs of age group 40-49 years (OR: 1.419, 95%CI: (0.14-4.78, P=0.041) have higher odds of good knowledge. Similarly, age group of 31-39 years (OR: 1.377, 95% CI: 0.14-2.04, P=0.05), experience of more than 5 years (OR: 10.71, 95% CI: 2.83-40.75, P<0.001), and pharmacist job (OR: 2.247, 95% CI: 1.11-4.55, P=0.025) were the substantial determinants of good practice regarding COVID-19. HCPs in Pakistan have good knowledge, yet, there are areas where gaps in knowledge and practice was observed. To effectively control infection spread, well-structured . CC-BY 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. (which was not certified by peer review) : medRxiv preprint training programs must be launched by government targeting all kinds of HCPs to raise their existed knowledge.

Knowledge, attitude and practice regarding COVID-19 among healthcare workers in Chitwan, Nepal

“…This may be because the study was conducted during the early stage of an outbreak of this disease when the entire health system and healthcare workers were being prepared to deal with a possible epidemic of COVID-19 in Nepal. The findings were similar to a study done by Saqlain et al, where 93.2% of respondents had good knowledge, positive attitude, and 88.7% of them had good practice towards COVID-19 (9). Similarly, Zhou et al also reported that the majority of HCWs in a study in China had sufficient knowledge and good practice towards COVID-19 (n = 89%, 89.7%, respectively) (10).…”

“…A similar positive correlation between attitude and practice scores was also seen in a study regarding COVID-19 by Peng et al (r = 0.319, p value < 0.001) (11). Saqlain et al also reported positive linear correlation between knowledge and practice scores (r = 0.142, p value-0.016), and between attitude and practice scores (r = 0.174, p value-0.004) in their study (9). The right knowledge, along with the right attitude, can eventually lead to safe practices and healthy behaviors (12).…”

The knowledge and practice towards COVID-19 pandemic prevention among residents of Ethiopia: An Online Cross-Sectional Study

“…It is lower than the study conducted in China among health care workers in which the knowledge of HCW towards COVID 19 prevention was high (89%) (Zhou et al 2020). Furthermore, this finding is lower than the finding conducted in Pakistan in which the knowledge towards COVID 19 prevention was 92.3% (Saqlain et al 2020). This discrepancy could be due to the difference in the study population.…”

Pandemic related Health literacy – A Systematic Review of literature in COVID-19, SARS and MERS pandemics

“…For attitudes about pandemics, worry/fear/helplessness about pandemic (13, 14, 22, 28, 31, 33, 49, 51, 52, 60, 61, 63, 65, 68, 72, 76-78, 81, 83, 84), confidence in governments' ability to manage pandemic (13,23,28,30,33,41,61,63,65,68,70,77,78,82) and perceived severity of infection as a public health problem (13,29,39,41,44,45,59,65,70,72) was most commonly assessed. (Table 3) For practices in pandemics, behaviours related to mask utilization (14,16,23,26,28,30,32,33,35,38,40,48,59,61,63,65,70,73,80,82,(84)(85)…”

“…Sociodemographic factors which were commonly associated with better health literacy included higher educational level (23, 26, 27, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 40, 42, 43, 45, 72-77, 80-82, 88, 89), increased age (23,26,30,37,40,43,48,50,63,65,72,74,75,78,84,85) and female gender (13,16,23,26,33,34,38,40,41,44,45,60,62,72,74,78,80,81,84,85,89). For health systems-based factors, increased experience in the healthcare system (48,56,63,76,77,89) and attendance in health education programs (28,33,58,60,71,<...>…”