Antibiotic Knowledge and Awareness Among Healthcare Professional Students in Chennai –a Questionnaire-based Online Survey

Abstract

Background: Antibiotic resistance had become the greatest threat to modern medicine due to misuse and abuses of antibiotics, when resistance develops against the antibiotics by the microorganism, there will be a need for use of newer, higher efficacy, and more expensive antibiotics. Therefore, Every Health Care Professional student should be Knowledgeable about antibiotics and be aware of antibiotic resistance to prevent harmful effects of antibiotics. Objective: To assess the knowledge and awareness of antibiotics among healthcare professional students, to educate knowledge about antibiotics, and create awareness of antibiotic resistance among healthcare professional students. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Chennai, on June28th, 2021.Permission was obtained from IRB; a well-organized questionnaire was executed with 20 items using Google Forms. Pre- structured questions were pre-validated by Experts. Google form contains the details such as socio-demographic, knowledge, and awareness-based questions. The Completed data were collected and entered into an excel sheet and the results were analyzed with the proper statistical method. Results: According to the statistical analysis of data received, only61.34% of healthcare professional students are aware of antibiotics and only 66.26% of healthcare professional students have adequate knowledge about antibiotics. Conclusion: This study highly suggests that awareness camps, seminars, conferences, and lectures, etc., need to be organized for health care professional students to enable them to gain knowledge and awareness about antibiotics. Our study concludes that every Health Care Professional student should be Knowledgeable about antibiotics and be aware of antibiotic resistance to prevent harmful effects of antibiotics.