Objectives: This study was designed to assess Health Care Professionals' knowledge about occupational therapy in Makkah-Saudi Arabia. Methods: Convenience sampling was used and 320 of Health Care Professionals, including physicians, nurses, physical therapists and social workers, were recruited from three different hospitals in Makkah to fill in a developed questionnaire. Descriptive analysis was used for participant's demographic data presentation. The mean percent scores were compared among four groups of professionals by using One-way ANOVA test with post hoc Tucky's Test. The comparison was done by using Chi-square test. Results: The study found that Health Care Professionals had poor knowledge about occupational therapy (49.35%, SD=7.36). It also exhibited that the highest percentage of knowledge about occupational therapy within the four groups was in physicians (51.97%) followed by physical therapists (50.81%, n=24) and nurses (48.32, n= 165), whereas social workers had the lowest percentage of knowledge (47.17%, n= 30). Conclusion: Health care professionals in Makkah lack adequate knowledge about occupational therapy, its goals and treatment methods. This dearth of knowledge among Health Care Professional requires to be addressed in order to improve the provision of service for patients in need of occupational therapy to subsequently improve their quality of life.

Objective: To measure the knowledge of healthcare professionals about increasingly prevalent Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) along with perceptions around its management and prognosis and comparison across various specialties. Methods: This Cross sectional survey based comparative analysis took place at Maternity and Children Hospital and King Faisal Hospital Makkah from December 2017 to May 2018. The validated self-administered “Knowledge about childhood autism among health workers” questionnaire was used along with additional questions regarding perceptions about ASD. The mean and mean percent scores were calculated. Chi squared test and ANOVA were applied to find the association between quantitative and qualitative variables respectively. Results: Out of 162 participants, 153 returned the questionnaire and 147 were included in final analysis. Physicians constituted 81.6% (120) of participants. The mean score for participants was 9.80(S.E.M ±0.32) where non-physicians yielded higher mean score (11.2±4.41) as compared to physicians (9.6±3.28) (p=0.113). Psychiatrists had highest score of 16/19 while general physicians had lowest (6/19). Participants with more years of experience had higher mean scores (p-value = 0.01). About 72.10% (106) of participants opted for medication as a treatment option. Nearly 38.1% (56) of participants were skeptical about improvement of ASD with early interventions. Conclusion: There is a lack of knowledge about ASD amongst healthcare professionals in Saudi Arabia. Experienced professionals working with ASD children can be utilized to deliver targeted trainings nationwide. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.35.4.605 How to cite this:Hayat AA, Meny AH, Salahuddin N, Alnemary FM, Ahuja KR, Azeem MW. Assessment of knowledge about childhood autism spectrum disorder among healthcare workers in Makkah- Saudi Arabia. Pak J Med Sci. 2019;35(4):---------. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.35.4.605 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

BACKGROUND The public awareness about occupational therapy and its role is not much studied in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, this study intended to provide baseline data about existing knowledge, as well as to identify the knowledge gaps in specific domains of knowledge which could help in designing precise and targeted strategies to increase awareness about the occupational therapy (OT) services, their role, and scope among the masses. METHODS A cross-sectional survey was carried out among people of Saudi Arabia (SA) to explore the degree of knowledge they had about occupational therapy services. A developed and validated online structured questionnaire was used to collect data from people across all the five regions through social media channels. RESULTS The total number of participants was 4,440. Females represented 56.8 %, (N = 2520) of the sample, where 43.2 % (N=1920) were males. Majority of the respondents were Saudi 88.6 % (N = 3936), married 58.1 % (N = 2579), held higher educational degrees 71.4 % (N = 3172) and employed 59.9 % (N = 2469). Most of the participants were in the age range of 20 - 30 years 47.4 % (N = 2104). The overall mean score was 9.82 / 21 (SD ± 7.105) and 46.76 %, implying that the general public had poor knowledge about OT and its applications. One-way analysis of variance indicated a significant difference in knowledge among different regions of SA (P- value = < 0.05). Regionwise the highest mean score knowledge was in the Southern region (10.54), whereas Najran had the highest score (14.22) in city-wise analysis. Higher knowledge was associated with a younger age range (10.84) and level of education (median score 13). On comparing the mean score amongst the four domains of OT knowledge, the highest mean score (1.70, SD ± 1.348) was regarding OT goals, whereas the lowest (1.64, SD ± 1.658) was in the OT treatment methods. CONCLUSIONS The Saudi masses may not fully understand the specific services that an occupational therapist may provide. They had poor knowledge about OT roles and implications. Degree of knowledge was significantly affected by the level of education and younger age. KEY WORDS Occupational Therapy, Knowledge, Saudi Arabia, Attitude, Rehabilitation

No abstract

No abstract