Knowledge and attitude among healthcare workers towards COVID-19: a cross sectional study from Jeddah city, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Introduction: The emergence of the new Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused a major impact on global health system. This cross-sectional study was designed to appraise the knowledge and attitude of healthcare workers towards COVID-19 and find out their understanding about clinical aspects of the infection.
 Methodology: A total number of 1023 of healthcare workers responded to an online questionnaire and provided their data between February and March, 2020 in Jeddah city, Western province, Saudi Arabia. The questionnaire was distributed to physicians, nurses, pharmacists, technical staff and administrative staff working in clinical settings.
 Results: Results revealed that mean scores for knowledge and attitude were 20.793 ± 2.436 and 4.744 ± 0.297 respectively. More than 88% of participants displayed positive knowledge and attitude towards COVID-19. Knowledge data showed that social media and the workplace, were the main sources of information for the majority of respondents. Approximately 99.12% of respondents were aware of the viral pandemic, and the causative agent. Statistically significant association was found when compared the demographic characteristics with the mean knowledge while no statistical significance was observed when compared demographic characteristics with the mean attitude score except with marital status.
 Conclusion: This study showed that healthcare workers had sufficient knowledge and positive attitude towards COVID-19. However, hospital staff should be periodically given sufficient training to effectively cope with such outbreaks in the future.

Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice Towards COVID-19 Among Pharmacists: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…However, many studies have evaluated the KAP traits in HCWs rather than focusing on active participation yielding diverse outcomes. Our findings of positive KAP qualities among HCWs as a whole concurs with, for example, the study of Qadah, which reported sufficient knowledge and positive attitude towards COVID-19 in HCWs in Saudi Arabia 20 and Olum et al demonstrating sufficient knowledge, positive attitude and good practices toward the disease among HCWs in Uganda. 14 In contrast, HCWs in Nepal displayed deficiencies in knowledge but practice compounded by both positive and negative viewpoints in combating disease transmission.…”

“…In Saudi Arabia, for example, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Ministry of Health (MOH), 22 social media, and the workplace were employed as their source of information in some studies. 20 In the current study, however, the primary sources of information were health educators and newspapers, which may be limited concerning the nature of the dissipated relevant information. Other studies blamed the lack of information for the observed low KAPs in their studies.…”

“…Several studies have addressed the level of COVID-19related knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) among the HCWs, [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] with widely varying outcomes in various regions of the world. Thus, while some have reported adequate knowledge, good attitude, and practice, many others have found the opposite trends.…”

“…38 However, in the study of Peng in China, while most undergraduates acquired the necessary knowledge, positive attitude, and proactive practice in response to the pandemic outbreak, their KAP scores varied significantly by gender, medical major, and school types. 32 In the general population, respondents have exhibited overall good knowledge regarding the covid-19 pandemic in countries including Saudi Arabia, 20,22,23,48 Egypt, 24 India, 25 China, 26 Malaysia, 27 Uganda, 28 and the USA. 29 However, while in the majority of these countries, satisfactory knowledge was partly linked to the positive attitude and sensible practices, 28 in some countries, these trends were observed together with poor practice 24 or exhibited gaps in knowledge among certain groups such as drivers, business entrepreneurs, and security personnel.…”

Nurses’ use of social media during the COVID-19 pandemic—A scoping review

“…The studies' research areas and aims consisted of evaluations of risk perception, attitudes, knowledge and preparedness related to COVID-19 [47,49,[51][52][53][54][55][56] and explorations of social media posts [48,50], including policies, and both social media and traditional printed news media and magazines [57].…”